Part 2

While they were having tea, his friend picked up picture, looked at it and said, ‘Where’s this house, Williams?’
‘That’s just what I was going to find out, ‘ said Williams, taking book from shelf. ‘If you look at back, you’ll see it’s Something Hall in either Essex or Sussex. Half name’s missing, you see. I don’t suppose you recognize house, do you? ‘
‘No, I don’t,‘ said Mr Binks. ‘It’s from Britnell, ‘I suppose, isn’t it? Is it for museum?’
‘Well, I would buy it if price was two pounds,‘ replied Mr Williams, ‘but for reason he wants twenty pounds for it. I can’t think why. It’s not very good picture and there aren’t even figures in it to make it more interesting.’

‘I agree it’s not worth twenty pounds,’ said Binks, ‘but I don’t think it’s too bad. light seems rather good to me and I think there is figure here, just at edge, in front.’
‘Let me see,’ said Williams. ‘Well, it’s true light is quite well done. Where’s figure? Oh, yes! Just head, in very front of picture.’

And indeed there was — right on edge of picture — just head of man or woman, who was looking towards house. Williams had not noticed it before.

‘Still,’ he said, ‘though it’s better than I thought at first, I can’t spend twenty pounds of museum’s money on picture of house I don’t even know.’

Mr Binks, who had work to finish, soon left and Mr Williams spent time before dinner trying to find name of house in his guidebooks.

‘If I knew letter before word “—ngly”,’ he said to himself, ‘it would be easy enough. But there are many more names ending in “—ngly” than I thought.’

dinner in Mr Williams’ college was at seven o’clock and afterwards few of his friends came back to his rooms to play cards. During pause in game Mr Williams picked up picture from table without looking at it and passed it to man named Garwood, who was interested in pictures. Garwood looked at it and said: ‘This is really very fine picture, you know, Williams. light is very well done, in my opinion, and though figure is rather unpleasant, it is quite interesting.’

‘Yes, isn’t it?‘ said Williams, who was too busy giving drinks to his guests to look at picture again.