“As good as told you you know nothing about anything?” Waymarsh appeared to look at some one who might have as good as told _him_. “How old is he?” “Well, I guess not thirty.” “Yet you had to take that from him?” “Oh I took a good deal more—since, as I tell you, I took an invitation to déjeuner.” “And are you _going_ to that unholy meal?” “If you’ll come with me. He wants you too, you know. I told him about you. He gave me his card,” Strether pursued, “and his name’s rather funny. It’s John Little Bilham, and he says his two surnames are, on account of his being small, inevitably used together.” “Well,” Waymarsh asked with due detachment from these details, “what’s he doing up there?” “His account of himself is that he’s ‘only a little artist-man.’ That seemed to me perfectly to describe him. But he’s yet in the phase of study; this, you know, is the great art-school—to pass a certain number of years in which he came over. And he’s a great friend of Chad’s, and occupying Chad’s rooms just now because they’re so pleasant. _He’s_ very pleasant and curious too,” Strether added—“though he’s not from Boston.” Waymarsh looked already rather sick of him. “Where _is_ he from?” Strether thought. “I don’t know that, either. But he’s ‘notoriously,’ as he put it himself, not from Boston.” “Well,” Waymarsh moralised from dry depths, “every one can’t notoriously _be_ from Boston. Why,” he continued, “is he curious?” “Perhaps just for _that_—for one thing! But really,” Strether added, “for everything. When you meet him you’ll see.” “Oh I don’t want to meet him,” Waymarsh impatiently growled. “Why don’t he go home?” Strether hesitated. “Well, because he likes it over here.” This appeared in particular more than Waymarsh could bear. “He ought then to be ashamed of himself, and, as you admit that you think so too, why drag him in?” Strether’s reply again took time. “Perhaps I do think so myself—though I don’t quite yet admit it. I’m not a bit sure—it’s again one of the things I want to find out. I liked him, and _can_ you like people—? But no matter.” He pulled himself up. “There’s no doubt I want you to come down on me and squash me.” Waymarsh helped himself to the next course, which, however proving not the dish he had just noted as supplied to the English ladies, had the effect of causing his imagination temporarily to wander. But it presently broke out at a softer spot. “Have they got a handsome place up there?” “Oh a charming place; full of beautiful and valuable things. I never saw such a place”—and Strether’s thought went back to it. “For a little artist-man—!” He could in fact scarce express it. But his companion, who appeared now to have a view, insisted. “Well?” “Well, life can hold nothing better. Besides, they’re things of which he’s in charge.”