Gurney.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“Foolish, foolish,” said Mr. Gurney, clicking his tongue. “Let sleeping dogs lie. If you find you’ve made a loss you’ll start worrying, and if you show a profit the Income Tax will have it sure as nuts. Beware the Jabberwock, my boy; beware the Income Tax. I never take stock.”

Stephen wasn’t surprised. Mr. Gurney, who kept the antique furniture shop next door, observed none of the conventions of retail trade. He opened when he felt like it and shut when he became bored. If the conversation, manners or faces of his customers displeased him, he compensated himself for having to put up with their company by doubling his prices. On the other hand, if he liked the look of a person he was apt to knock off twenty-five per cent. Since almost every article in his shop was skilfully faked he could afford to do this. From time to time he would “dodge out,” as he put it, for a drink, sticking up in his window a peculiarly discouraging notice which said Back in half an hour; and often, like Mr. Handiman the ironmonger, he would take himself off for the whole day, leaving no apology at all.

“What’s all this about an extra episode?” he said, while Stephen sat on the top of the ladder, fascinated by a bird’s-eye view of Mr. Gurney’s enormous jowl bulging out over a butterfly collar.

“Well, the Committee feels that we can’t just stop at Charles the Second. Something must have happened, even in this place, since then.”

“A great many things have happened,” said Mr. Gurney. “People have been born, have loved, married, had children, hated, dreamed, cheated, thieved, prospered, and starved; and in due course have died wondering what it was all about. But that, Noakes tells me, is not History.” Mr. Gurney bore an ancient grudge against Councillor Noakes, of which the origin was lost in obscurity. “History, according to him, consists of Battles, Kings and Queens.”

“And Odo and Dodo,” said Stephen, “and Dame Joanna. By the way, I shall have to know a bit more about that lady. Apparently she was our only local poet, but what did she write?”

“Reams,” said Mr. Gurney, “and all in practically undecipherable manuscript at the Bodleian. Most of it is extremely coarse.”

“But she was a Prioress!”

“There are suggestions that her nunnery was not everything that it should be.”

“Look here,” said Stephen, “how am I expected to produce an episode in which somebody founds a nunnery which is not everything that it should be?”

“That’s your headache,” said Mr. Gurney cheerfully. “My job is simply to give you the facts.” And with that he was gone. His grotesque shadow lifted itself like a cumbrous bird off the worn carpet on the floor and flapped away. “Remember what 1 said about the Income Tax!” he squawked from the door. “Beware the Jabberwock, my boy!” He waved his umbrella in valediction, and then the sunshine flooded back into the small square room.

Stephen once more turned his attention to the top shelf, where all his worst bargains stood in a row, skied there like second-rate pictures in an Art Gallery because it was inconceivable that anybody should buy them.