[Denzil Quarrier by George Gissing]@TWC D-Link book
Denzil Quarrier

CHAPTER II
10/15

At a quarter-past, Glazzard took a cab which conveyed him to one of the Inns of Court.

He ascended stairs, and reached a door on which was inscribed the name of Mr.Stark, Solicitor.
An office-boy at once admitted him to the innermost room, where he was greeted with much friendliness by a short, stout man, with gleaming visage, full lips, chubby hands.
"Well, what is it now ?" inquired the visitor, who had been summoned hither by a note that morning.
Mr.Stark, with an air of solemnity not wholly jocose, took his friend's arm and led him to a corner of the room, where, resting against a chair-back, was a small ill-framed oil painting.
"What have you to say to that ?" "The ugliest thing I've seen for a long time." "But--but--" the solicitor stammered, with indignant eagerness--"but do know whose it is ?" The picture represented a bit of country road, with a dung-heap, a duck-pond, a pig asleep, and some barn-door fowls.
"I know whose you _think_ it is," replied Glazzard, coldly.

His face still had an unhealthy pallor, and his eyes looked as if they had but just opened after the oppression of nightmare.

"But it isn't." "Come, come, Glazzard! you are too dictatorial, my boy." Mr.Stark kept turning a heavy ring upon his finger, showing in face and tone that the connoisseur's dogmatism troubled him more than he wished to have it thought.
"Winterbottom warrants it," he added, with a triumphant jerk of his plump body.
"Then Winterbottom is either cheating or cheated.

That is no Morland; take my word for it.


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