pose," I said, "with
your long journeys you get plenty of time for reading?"

"Time enough," he said.

I continued by a reference to the advantages which we enjoyed over our
fathers and grandfathers in the multiplicity of cheap books. "Those
wonderful sevenpennies!" I said.

He agreed. He had often spent ten minutes at a junction in looking at
them.

"And the shilling books," I said. "The more serious ones--'Everyman's
Library,' and all that sort of thing. Most remarkable!"

He had noticed those too, but still he offered no views of his own.

I saw that he was one of the uncommunicative kind. Information must be
drawn forcibly from him.

"And the two-shilling novels," I said--"they're wonderful too."

I But his eyes did not light; his I purple mask kept its secrets.

"The two-shilling ones," I repeated, with emphasis on the price. Hang
it, how slow he was.

Still he said nothing.

"So much better than the old yellowbacks at that figure," I said.

He was, if anything, more silent.

Clearly I must plunge. "Who is your favourite writer?" I demanded,
point-blank.

"I haven't got such a thing," he said.

Here's a strange thing, I thought. I suppose he's one of those
mechanical readers who go through a book as a kind of dutiful pastime
and never even notice the author's name.

"But you read a lot?" I suggested.

"Me? Good gracious, no," he said. "I don't read a book from one year's
end to the other. Papers--oh, yes; but not books."

I was staggered.

"But I thought," I said, "that I heard you say a little while ago that
you never bought fewer than three two-shilling books a week, and
sometimes more?"

His purple took on a darker richer shade, which I subsequently
discovered indicated the approach of mirth. He began to make strange
noises, which in time I found meant laughter.

For a while he gave himself up to chromatic rumblings. At last, able to
speak, he replied to me. "So I did say," he said; "so I did say I bought
three two-shilling books a week. But not books to read"--here he became
momentarily inarticulate again--"not books to read, but those little
two-shilling books of stamps in red covers that you get at the
post-office. I don't know where I should be without them."

Shade of CARNEGIE!

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Injured Party (who has just been turned out of a
public-house, explaining his little grievance_). "NOW, WHAT D'YOU SHAY,
CONSHABLE? D'YOU THI