If I find my orders disregarded again, I shall leave the house _that day_.' I daren't do it, sir.

You wouldn't like to deprive me of my lodger, I know, sir." The last pathetic plea could not be gainsaid, so Arthur had his way.
Four evenings he devoted to going out, and the other three dining quietly at home and reading.

By the time he left London his reading, always wide, had become prodigious.

His own library was good, and he had a ticket for the British Museum Reading-room and belonged to two circulating libraries.

He made a point of reading new books (1) if he was strongly recommended them by specialists; (2) if they reached a second edition within a month; (3) if they were republished after a period of neglect--this he held to be the best test of a book.
It was characteristic of his natural indolence that he chose the very easiest method of reading--that is to say, he always read, if he could, _in_ a translation, or if the style of the original was the object, _with_ one.