"It will give me both pleasure and diversion," said Quarren laughing. "There is not enough business in my office to afford me either. Also you are welcome to send for those pictures and store them in my back parlour until you can find a purchaser."
"It's an idea, isn't it?" mused his lordship. "Now I don't suppose you happen to know anything about such rubbish, do you?—pictures and that sort. What?"
"Why—yes—I do, in a way."
"The devil you do! But then I've always been told that you know something about everything——"
"Very, very little," said Quarren, laughing. "In an ignorant world smatterings are reverenced. But the fashionable Philistine of yesterday, who used to boast of his ignorance regarding things artistic and intellectual, is becoming a little ashamed of his ignorance——"
Dankmere, reddening, said bluntly:
"That applies to me; doesn't it?"
"I beg your pardon!—I didn't mean it that way——"
"You're right, anyway. I'm damnably ignorant.... See here, Quarren, if I send over for some of those pictures of mine, will you give me your opinion like a good fellow before I make a bally ass of myself by offering probable trash to educated people?"
"I'll tell you all I know about your pictures, if that is what you mean," said Quarren, much amused.