cking
things up.

"A great country, I believe, for picking things up," he had said.
"Particularly for the garden." He had been referring to his country seat.

"I see," said Peter. "You want to Italianise the garden. I'm not quite
sure.... Oh, you might, of course. Iron-work gates, then; and carved
Renaissance oil-tanks, and Venetian well-heads, and such-like. All right;
we'll see what we can steal. But it's rather easy to let an Italianised
garden become florid; you have to be extremely careful with it."

"That's up to you," said Mr. Leslie tranquilly.

So they went to Italy, and Peter picked things up with judgment, and
Leslie paid for them with phlegm. They picked up not only carved
olive-oil tanks and well-heads and fifteenth-century iron-work gates from
ancient and impoverished gardens, but a contemporarily copied Della
Robbia fireplace, and designs for Renaissance ceilings, and a rococo
carved and painted altar-piece from a mountain church whose _parroco_ was
hard-up, and a piece of 1480 tapestry that Peter loved very much, whereon
St. Anne and other saints played among roses and raspberries, beautiful
to behold. These things made both the picker-up and the payer exceedingly
contented. Meanwhile Peter with difficulty restrained Leslie from
"picking up" stray pieces of mosaic from tessellated pavements, and other
curios. Oddly together with Leslie's feeling for the costly went the
insane and indiscriminate avidity of the collecting tourist.

"You can't do it," Peter would shrilly and emphatically explain. "It's
like a German tripper collecting souvenirs. Things aren't interesting
merely because you happen to have been to the places they belong to. What
do you want with that bit of glass? It isn't beautiful; when it's taken
out of the rest of its pattern like that it's merely ridiculous. I
thought you wanted _beautiful_ things."

Leslie would meekly give in. His leaning on Peter in this matter of
what he wanted was touching. In the matter of what he admired, where no
questions of acquisition came in, he and his shopping-man agreed less.
Leslie here showed flashes of proper spirit. He also read Ruskin in the
train. Peter had small allegiance there; he even, when irritated, called
Ruskin a muddle-head.

"He's a good man, isn't he?" Leslie queried, puzzled. "Surely he knows
what he's talking about?" and Peter had to admit that that was so.

"He tells me what to like," the self-educator said simply. "And I try to