I shook my head.
“Don’t matter. Come to learn glass. There’s the houses; go and look round. I’ll call you when supper’s ready.”
I don’t know whether I felt in good spirits or bad; but soon ceased to think of everything but what I was seeing, as, being about to become a glass boy, I entered one of the great hothouses belonging to the large range of glass buildings.
A warm sweet-scented puff of air saluted me as I raised the copper latch of the door, and found myself in a great red-tiled vinery, with long canes trained from the rich soil at the roots straight up to the very ridge, while, with wonderful regularity, large bunches like inverted cones of great black grapes hung suspended from the tied-in twigs. There were rows of black iron pipes along the sides from which rose a soft heat, and the effect of this was visible in the rich juicy-looking berries covered with a pearly bloom, while from succulent shoot, leaf, and tendril rose the delicious scent that had saluted me as soon as I entered the place.
From this glass palace of a house, as it seemed to me, I went down into a far hotter place, where the walls were whitewashed and the glass roof very low. There was a peculiar odour of tan here, and as I closed the door after me the atmosphere felt hot and steamy.
But the sight that greeted my eyes made me forget all other sensations, for there all along the centre were what seemed to be beautiful, luxuriant aloes; and as I thought of the old story that they bloomed only once in a hundred years, I began to wonder how long it was since one of these spiky-leaved plants had blossomed, and then I cried excitedly:
“Pine-apples!”
True enough they were, for I had entered a large pinery where fruits were ripening and others coming on in the most beautiful manner, while what struck me most was the perfection and neatness of all the place.
Then I found myself in another grape-house where the vines bore oval white grapes, with a label to tell that they were Muscats. Then I went on into a long low house full of figs—small dumpy fig-trees in pots, with a peculiar odour rising from them through the hot moist air.
Again I was in a long low place something like the pinery, and here I was amongst melons—large netted-skinned melons of all sizes, some being quite huge, and apparently ready to cut.