this portion of the story, a list of likely names was made out, and Mr. Denton fixed a day for calling on them, or some of them, with his sample.
The first two visits which he paid were unsuccessful: but there is luck in odd numbers. The firm in Bermondsey which was third on his list was accustomed to handling this line. The evidence they were able to produce justified their being entrusted with the job. ‘Our Mr. Cattell’ took a fervent personal interest in it. ‘It’s ‘eartrending, isn’t it, sir,’ he said, ‘to picture the quantity of reelly lovely medeevial stuff of this kind that lays well-nigh unnoticed in many of our residential country ‘ouses: much of it in peril, I take it, of being cast aside as so much rubbish. What is it Shakespeare says—unconsidered trifles. Ah, I often say he ‘as a word for us all, sir. I say Shakespeare, but I’m well aware all don’t ‘old with me there—I ‘ad something of an upset the other day when a gentleman came in-a titled man, too, he was, and I think he told me he’d wrote on the topic, and I ‘appened to cite out something about ‘Ercules and the painted cloth. Dear me, you never see such a pother. But as to this, what you’ve
