08: Great Expectations: Charles Dickens
Mr Pumblechook's premises in the high streets of market town, were of a peppercorny and farinacious character, as the premises of a corn-chandler and seedsman should be. It appeared to me that he must be a very happy man, to have many little drawers in his shop. I peeped into one or two of these drawers in the lower tiers. The brown packets inside, I wondered whether the bulbs or seeds in them ever wanted of a fine day to break out of those jails, and bloom. It was in the early morning after my arrival those thoughts came to me. On the previous night I had been sent straight to bed in an attic with a sloping roof, which was so low in the corner where the bedstead was, and the tiles being within a foot of my eyebrows. Mr Pumblechook wore corduroys. And so did his shopman. There was a general air and flavour about the corduroys, so much in the nature of seeds. A singular affinity between corduroys and seeds. Uncle Pumblechook appeared to transact...