As I finished paying him--no small affair, with all the new supplements--he
resumed.

"I'm sorry you had the journey for nothing," he said. "It's rough. But
never mind--have something on Comrade for the Grand Prix" (he pronounced
"Prix" to rhyme with "fix") "in France on Sunday. I'm told it's the goods.
Then you won't mind about your bad luck this afternoon. Don't forget--
Comrade to win and one, two, three."

After this I must revise my opinion of taxi-drivers, which used not to be
very high: especially as Comrade differed from most racehorses of my
acquaintance by coming in first.

The third man perhaps was more unexpected than exceptional. His
unexpectedness took the form not of benevolence but of culture. He is a
vendor of newspapers. A pleasant old fellow with a smiling weather-beaten
face, grey moustache and a cloth cap, whom I have known for most of the six
years during which he has stood every afternoon except Sundays on the kerb
between a lamp-post and a letter-box at one of London's busiest corners. I
have bought his papers and referred to the weather all that time, but I
never talked with him before. Why, I cannot say; I suppose because the hour
had not struck. On Friday, however, we had a little conversation, all
growing from the circumstance that while he was counting out change I
noticed a fat volume protruding from his coat pocket and asked him what it
was.

It was his reply that qualified him to be numbered among Friday's elect.
"That book?" he said--"that's _Barchester Towers_."

I asked him if he read much.