Certainly it was a charming room of a usual enough type:
lamp-lit and soft-carpeted; brass fittings about the fireplace where a
coal fire glowed; a large red reading-table with the customary litter of
books and periodicals; comfortable chairs to sit in; two uncommonly
pretty mahogany bookcases with quaint leaded windows. The crude central
identity about all bedrooms that had hitherto come within Queed's ken,
to wit, the bed, seemed in this remarkable room to be wanting
altogether. For how was he, with his practical inexperience, to know
that the handsome leather lounge in the bay-window had its in'ards
crammed full of sheets, and blankets, and hinges and collapsible legs?
The young man gravitated instinctively toward the bookcases. His expert
eye swept over the titles, and his gloom lightened a little.
"You have some fair light reading here, I see," he said, plucking out a
richly bound volume of Lecky's _History of European Morals_.
Nicolovius, who was observing him closely, smiled to himself. "Ah, yes.
I'm the merest dilettante, without your happiness of being a specialist
of authority.
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