He would cry out against a momentary
confusion between a light-green Paddington and a dark-green
Bayswater vehicle, as his uncle would at the identification of a
Greek ikon and a Roman image.
"Do you collect omnibuses like stamps?" asked his uncle. "They must
need a rather large album. Or do you keep them in your locker?"
"I keep them in my head," replied the nephew, with legitimate
firmness.
"It does you credit, I admit," replied the clergyman. "I suppose it
were vain to ask for what purpose you have learned that out of a
thousand things. There hardly seems to be a career in it, unless you
could be permanently on the pavement to prevent old ladies getting
into the wrong bus. Well, we must get out of this one, for this is
our place. I want to show you what they call St. Paul's Penny."
"Is it like St. Paul's Cathedral?" asked the youth with resignation,
as they alighted.
At the entrance their eyes were arrested by a singular figure
evidently hovering there with a similar anxiety to enter. It was
that of a dark, thin man in a long black robe rather like a cassock;
but the black cap on his head was of too strange a shape to be a
biretta. It suggested, rather, some archaic headdress of Persia or
Babylon. He had a curious black beard appearing only at the corners
of his chin, and his large eyes were oddly set in his face like the
flat decorative eyes painted in old Egyptian profiles.
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