Then a curious thing happened.

A person who had been moving slowly along near me, apparently looking with no great interest at the memorials, came past me and glanced first at the tablet I was looking at, then at me.

As our eyes met I remarked that I was admiring the best memorial I had found in the abbey, and then added, "I've been trying to make out its meaning.

You see the man is a traveller and is stepping ashore with a flowering spray in his hand.

It strikes me that it may have been erected to the memory of a person who introduced some valuable plant into England." "Yes, perhaps," he said.