"If I ask you any questions, sir, " said I, " they will not be very severel but since I hear that you are a weaver I should like to ask you something about that craft, as I am--or was--interested in it. ""O," said he, "I shall not be of much use to you there, I'm afraid. Ionly do the most mechanical kind of weaving, and am in fact but a poor craftsman, unlike Dick here. Then besides the weaving, I do a little with machine printing and composing, though I am little use at the finer kinds of printing; and moreover machine printing is beginning to die out, along with the waning of the plague of book-making, so i have had to turn to other things that I have a taste for, and have taken to mathematics; and also I am writing a sort of antiquarian book about the peaceable and private history, so to say, of the end of the nineteenth century,--more for the sake of giving a picture of the country befor the fighting began than for anything else. That was why I asked you those questions about Epping Forest. You have rather puzzled me, I confess, though yoour information was so interesting.
But later on, I hope, we may have some more talk together, when our friend Dick isn't here. I know he thinks me rather a grinder, and despises me for not being very deft with my hands: that's the way nowadays. From what I have read of the nineteenth century literature (and I have read a good deal), it is clear to me that this is a kind of revenge for the stupidity of that day, which despised everybody who _could_ use his hands. But, Dick, old fellow, _Ne quid nimis!_ Don't overdo it!""Come now," said Dick, "Am I likely to? Am I not the most tolerant man in the world? Am I not quite contented so long as you don't make me learn mathematics or go into your new science of aesthetics, and let me do a little practical aesthetics with my gold and steel, and the blowpipe and the nice little hammer? But, hillo! here come another questioner for you, my poor guest. I say, Bob, you must help me defend him now. ""Here, Boffin," he cried out, after a pause; "here we are, if you must have it! "I looked over my shoulder, and saw something flash and gleam in the sunlight that lay across the hall; so I turned round, and at my ease saw a splendid figure slowly sauntering over the pavement; a man whose surcoat was embroidered most copiously as well as elegantly, so that the sun flashed back from him as if he had been clad in golden armour.
The man himself was tall, dark-haired, and exceedingly handsome, and though his face was less kindly in expression than that of the others, he moved with that somewhat haughty mien which great beautyk is apt to give to both men and women. He came and saat down at our table with a smiling face, stretching out his long legs and hanging his arm over the chair in the slowly graceful way which tall and well-built people may use without affectation. He was a man in the prime of life, but looked as happy as a child who has just got a new toy. He bowed gracefully to me and said:
" I see clearly that you are the guest, of whom Annie has just told me, who have come from some distant country that does not know of us, or our ways of life. So I daresay you would not mind answering me a few question; for you see--"Here Dick broke in: "No, please, Boffin! let it alone for the present.
