Her Faithful Knight — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HER FAITHFUL KNIGHT. CHAPTER I. THE HOUR AND THE WOMAN. In no sense of the word can Great Russell street be called a cheerful thoroughfare—especially on a wet day. The British Museum pigeons, huddled together in the space before the grim, gray building, sacred to learning and the arts, flap their soiled, wet wings disconsolately ; they are sober-minded birds at the best of times, perpetu- ally weighted by a consciousness of their educational sur- roundings. In the rain they look only a little less be- draggled than the dreary file of waterproofed and mackin- toshed readers, splashing their way toward the shallow steps and heavy portico in search of food for their hungry minds. In fine weather it is not difficult to distinguish between the patrons of the reading-room and the art students who haunt the sculpture galleries. Among the latter a per- centage is inclined to giggling and whispering, to beads, bows, curled fringes, pigtails, and a chastened levity of spirit. Undersized youths between the ages of sixteen and six-and-twenty ; ill-dressed, unshaven, and apparently unwashed, occupy a considerable amount of these young ladies’ attention. On a wet May morning, Aylmer Read, a big, fair- haired young man of seven-and-twenty, sauntering up EOMIGIoOO S ico —_—