Elijah led me to the back of this house where the alder bushes grew thick and damp and shut out the place from the eyes of the passers-by along the towpath of the canal.
And there, joined to the house by a narrow arcade, was a long low building of one storey, with high round-topped windows set along the wall at regular and close intervals, some of these even carrying their original green glass. We pushed beneath an overhanging bramble-briar and entered this long room. It was warm and the air within it seemed thick and almost living, from the sun which shone in through the many windows along the wall. I gazed about me in wonder, for flowers of all sorts, both wild and cultivated, seemed to grow everywhere, from crevices in the plaster, through the cracked flagstones of the floor, even hang
