't know anything.«
    »And what good does that do you?«
    »It's just,« said Strether, »what I've come to you to help me to discover. I
mean anything about anything over here. I felt that, up there. It regularly rose
before me in its might. The young man moreover - Chad's friend - as good as told
me so.«
    »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
