It was drawing towards sunset, and lights began to appear in several of the houses as Tristram passed along. The few foot-passengers in the street wished him "Good night" in the Dutch tongue, and he answered their salutations amiably in English, guessing the good will in their voices. He was greatly pleased, also, by the number of villas and small gardens that diversified the houses of business, each with a painted summer-house over-topping the wall and a painted motto on the gate. 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. He was a little, wizened man, with a pair of horn spectacles, which he pushed high upon his brow as his customer entered.
"Since my father has engaged to buy Sophia a ring," said Tristram to himself, "I will get her a tulip. We will sit hand in hand and watch it unfold."
The prospect so engaged his fancy that he entered and began a sentence in excellent English. The shopman replied by shaking his head and uttering a few unintelligible words.
This was dashing. Tristram cast about for a few seconds, and began again in dog-Latin, a tongue which he had acquired in order to read the herbals to Captain Barker on winter evenings. To his delight the little man answered him promptly. Within a minute they were charmed with each other; within two, they had the highest opinion of each other; within ten, the counter was heaped with trays of the rarest bulbs, insomuch that Tristram found a grave difficulty in choosing that which should give the greatest pleasure to his Sophia. But, alas, in changing clothes with his son, Captain Salt had found it unnecessary to change breeches! Tristram put a hand into his pocket and discovered that it contained one coin only—the shilling with which he had been presented when forcibly enlisted in his Majesty's Coldstream Guards.
The Latin of the enthusiastic shopman was becoming almost Ciceronian, when Tristram pulled out the coin, and holding it under his nose briefly stated the case. Then the wizened face fell a full inch, and the eloquent voice broke off to explain that an English shilling, though doubtless a valid tender in England, was not worth more than a stiver, if that, to a Dutch tradesman.
Tristram apologised, adding that, if the shopman had a pennyworth of any kind of seed, he would purchase it as a small reparation for his intrusion on the time of so learned a man.
The shopman took the shilling and tossed upon the counter a packet of pepper-cress seed.
Our hero pocketed it, and was leaving the shop; but paused on the threshold and began to renew his apologies.