For the moderns were futile; painting the least respectable of the arts; and why read anything but Marlowe and Shakespeare, Jacob said, and Fielding if you must read novels?
"Fielding," said Fanny, when the man in Charing Cross Road asked her what book she wanted.
She bought Tom Jones.
At ten o'clock in the morning, in a room which she shared with a school teacher, Fanny Elmer read Tom Jones--that mystic book.

For this dull stuff (Fanny thought) about people with odd names is what Jacob likes.
Good people like it.

Dowdy women who don't mind how they cross their legs read Tom Jones--a mystic book; for there is something, Fanny thought, about books which if I had been educated I could have liked--much better than ear-rings and flowers, she sighed, thinking of the corridors at the Slade and the fancy-dress dance next week.

She had nothing to wear.
They are real, thought Fanny Elmer, setting her feet on the mantelpiece.
Some people are.

Nick perhaps, only he was so stupid.