Not only had I lost the books, but I had
lost the man himself: they and their author had been alike spoiled
for me. I knew too which was the loss I most regretted. I had
taken to the man still more than I had ever taken to the books.
CHAPTER VI.
Six months after our friend had left England George Corvick, who
made his living by his pen, contracted for a piece of work which
imposed on him an absence of some length and a journey of some
difficulty, and his undertaking of which was much of a surprise to
me. His brother-in-law had become editor of a great provincial
paper, and the great provincial paper, in a fine flight of fancy,
had conceived the idea of sending a "special commissioner" to
India. Special commissioners had begun, in the "metropolitan
press," to be the fashion, and the journal in question must have
felt it had passed too long for a mere country cousin. Corvick had
no hand, I knew, for the big brush of the correspondent, but that
was his brother-in-law's affair, and the fact that a particular
task was not in his line was apt to be with himself exactly a
reason for accepting it. He was prepared to out-Herod the
metropolitan press; he took solemn precautions against
priggishness, he exquisitely outraged taste. Nobody ever knew it--
that offended principle was all his own.
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