It was to a tinsmith's shop, where a bath had been ordered for my accommodation.
Ah! through how many years that steep street, with its clean, sunny stones, its irregular line of quaint old buildings, and the distant glimpse of big trees within palings into which it passed at the top, where the town touched the outskirts of some gentleman's place, has remained on my mind like a picture! Getting a little vague after a few years, and then perhaps a little altered, as fancy almost involuntarily supplied the defects of memory; but still that steep street, that tinsmith's shop--_the_ features of Oakford! I have since thought that Jemima must have had some special attraction to the tinsmith's, her errands there were so many, and took so much time.

This occasion may be divided into three distinct periods.

During the first, I waited in that state of vacant patience whereby one endures other people's shopping.

During the second, I walked round all the cans, pans, colanders, and graters, and took a fancy to a tin mug.
It was neither so valuable nor so handsome as the silver mug with dragon handles given me by my Indian godfather, but it was a novelty.
When I looked closer, however, I found that it was marked, in plain figures, fourpence, which at that time was beyond my means; so I walked to the door, that I might solace the third period by looking out into the street.

As I looked, there came down the hill a fine, large, sleek donkey, led by an old man-servant, and having on its back what is called a Spanish saddle, in which two little girls sat side by side, the whole party jogging quietly along at a foot's pace in the sunshine.