"
"That's a pity," she regretted. "Come. Father, this is Mr. Burton.
He is very hot and he is going to have tea with us, and he wrote those
impressions in the Piccadilly Gazette which you gave me to read. My
father is an Oriental scholar, Mr. Burton, but he is also interested in
modern things."
Burton held out his hand.
"I try to understand London," he said. "It is enough for me. I know
nothing about Assyria."
Mr. Cowper was a picturesque-looking old gentleman, with kind blue eyes
and long white hair.
"It is quite natural," he assented. "You were born in London, without a
doubt, you have lived there all your days and you write as one who sees.
I was born in a library. I saw no city till I entered college. I had
fashioned cities for myself long before then, and dwelt in them."
The girl had taken her place at the tea-table. Burton's eyes followed
her admiringly.
"You were brought up in the country?" he asked his host.
"I was born in the City of Strange Imaginings," Mr. Cowper replied. "I
read and read until I had learned the real art of fancy. No one who has
ever learned it needs to look elsewhere for a dwelling house. It is the
realism of your writing which fascinates me so, Mr.
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