dwelt a firm of tailors with whose Paris branch he had had dealings in
his dandiacal past.

An odd impulse perhaps, but natural.

A lighted clock-tower--far to his left as the cab rolled across the
bridge--showed that a legislative providence was watching over Israel.


_Alice on the Situation_


"I bet the building alone won't cost less than seventy thousand pounds,"
he said.

He was back again with Alice in the intimacy of Werter Road, and
relating to her, in part, the adventures of the latter portion of the
day. He had reached home long after tea-time; she, with her natural
sagacity, had not waited tea for him. Now she had prepared a rather
special tea for the adventurer, and she was sitting opposite to him at
the little table, with nothing to do but listen and refill his cup.

"Well," she said mildly, and without the least surprise at his figures,
"I don't know what he could have been thinking of--your Priam Farll! I
call it just silly. It isn't as if there wasn't enough picture-galleries
already. When what there are are so full that you can't get in--then it
will be time enough to think about fresh ones. I've been to the National
Gallery twice, and upon my word I was almost the only person there! And
it's free too! People don't _want_ picture-galleries. If they did they'd
go. Who ever saw a public-house empty, or Peter Robinson's? And you have