Soames walked eastwards, mousing doggedly along on the shady side.
The house wanted doing, up, unless he decided to move into the country,
and build.
For the hundredth time that month he turned over this problem. There
was no use in rushing into things! He was very comfortably off, with an
increasing income getting on for three thousand a year; but his invested
capital was not perhaps so large as his father believed--James had a
tendency to expect that his children should be better off than they
were. 'I can manage eight thousand easily enough,' he thought, 'without
calling in either Robertson's or Nicholl's.'
He had stopped to look in at a picture shop, for Soames was an 'amateur'
of pictures, and had a little-room in No. 62, Montpellier Square, full
of canvases, stacked against the wall, which he had no room to hang.
He brought them home with him on his way back from the City, generally
after dark, and would enter this room on Sunday afternoons, to spend
hours turning the pictures to the light, examining the marks on their
backs, and occasionally making notes.
They were nearly all landscapes with figures in the foreground, a
sign of some mysterious revolt against London, its tall houses, its
interminable streets, where his life and the lives of his breed and
class were passed.
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