He longed to explore these gardens and take home to Harwich some report of the famous Dutch tulip-beds on which Captain Barker was perpetually descanting.

A row of these garden-walls enticed him down a street to the right and out towards the suburbs, where the prospect at the end of the road was closed by a long line of windmills.
All this while he had been sauntering along at the idlest pace, with a score of pauses.

Suddenly he bethought him that it must be time to return, and was about to do so when his eye was caught by a little shop on the other side of the road.

He could not read the inscription above it; but the window was crowded with bulbs and roots of all kinds and bags of seed in small stacks.

He crossed the road and entered the low door, meaning to buy a present for Sophia, whom for the last half an hour he had completely forgotten.
The proprietor of the shop sat inside behind a low counter, reading a book by the light of a defective oil-lamp, the smoke of which had smeared the rafters in a large, irregular circle.