He stayed a little longer than he had intended, on a slight pressure of invitation from Mr. Brooke, who offered no bait except his own documents on machine-breaking and rick-burning. Mr. Casaubon was called into the library to look at these in a heap, while his host picked up first one and then the other to read aloud from in a skipping and uncertain way, passing from one unfinished passage to another with a “Yes, now, but here!” and finally pushing them all aside to open the journal of his youthful Continental travels.

“Look here⁠—here is all about Greece. Rhamnus, the ruins of Rhamnus⁠—you are a great Grecian, now. I don’t know whether you have given much study to the topography. I spent no end of time in making out these things⁠—Helicon, now. Here, now!⁠—‘We started the next morning for Parnassus, the double-peaked Parnassus.’ All this volume is about Greece, you know,” Mr. Brooke wound up, rubbing his thumb transversely along the edges of the leaves as he held the book forward.