"I read
something when I was half starving which was in a newspaper and had
obviously been paid for, and I saw at once that the only point about it
was that the man had put down what he saw instead of what he thought he
saw. I tried the same thing, and up to the present, at any rate, it
seems to go quite Well."
"That's queer," Mr. Waddington murmured. "Do you know," he continued,
dropping his voice and looking around him anxiously, "that I've taken to
reading Ruskin? I've got a copy of 'The Seven Lamps' at the office, and
I can't keep away from it. I slip it into my drawer if any one comes
in, like an office boy reading the Police Gazette. All the time I am in
the streets I am looking at the buildings, and, Burton, this is the
extraordinary part of it, I know no more about architecture than a babe
unborn, and yet I can tell you where they're wrong, every one of them.
There are some streets I can't pass through, and I close my eyes
whenever I get near Buckingham Palace. On the other hand, I walked a
mile the other day to see a perfect arch down in South Kensington, and
there are some new maisonettes in Queen Anne Street without a single
erring line."
Burton poured himself out a glass of wine from the bottle which his
companion had ordered.
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