. When almost at the end of this
particular side-street we came to a halt before a small house painted
green, and having above its glass-door a large and dusty black board
with the word "Confectionery" in tarnished gilt letters. To the right
and left of this door were windows, with old brown blinds closely
drawn, although the house was not on the sunny side of the street. I
can see the landscape on those blinds to this hour! A ruined temple
near a pond, on which a man with effaced features sat in a boat
angling, while a peacock spread his tail on the stump of a willow tree.
The glass door in the middle looked as though it had not been cleaned
for ten years, and its netted curtain, white once no doubt, was now by
reason of age, dust, and flies, pretty much the colour of the blinds.

I was startled when Sebastian prepared to enter this un-inviting
domicile: however I took care not to ruffle him again, and followed his
lead in no small excitement.

We were greeted by a hot cloying smell, which under ordinary
circumstances would instantly have driven me out again, a smell of old
dough, and fermenting strawberries, mingled with a flavour of chocolate
and Vanilla, a smell that only an inveterate sweet-tooth or a youth in
love could by possibility have consented to inhale! Added to this, the
room was not much more than six feet high, and apparently never
ventilated, except by the chance opening of the door. How my friend
could ever have expected to find the Dresden Evening Times in such an
out-of-the-way shop as this was a puzzle to me. Very soon, however, I
discovered what it was that had lured him again--spite of his
disappointment--into this distressing atmosphere. Behind the small
counter on which was displayed a limited selection of uninviting tarts
and cakes, I could see in the dusky window-seat behind the brown blind,
a young girl dressed in the simplest printed cotton gown possible, her
thick black hair just parted and cut short behind, a piece of knitting
in her hands, which she only laid down when after some delay and
uncertainty we had determined upon the inevitable cherry-tarts. My
friend who hardly dared to look at her, still less to speak, went into
the narrow, dark, and most comfortless little inner room, where the
"Vossische Journal," and the "Observer on the Spree" outspread on a
round table before the faded sofa, kept up a faint semblance of a
reading-room. A small fly-blinded mirror hung on the wall between