“Poor Henry,” said Strange, when Mr Woodhope had gone. “I suppose we must bore him horribly.”

“It is most good-natured of your friend to accompany you on your journey, when he himself can have no interest in its object,” said Mr Honeyfoot.

“Oh, certainly!” said Strange. “But then, you know, he was forced to come with me when he found it so quiet at home. Henry is paying us a visit of some weeks, but ours is a very retired neighbourhood and I believe I am a great deal taken up with my studies.”

Mr Segundus asked Mr Strange when he began to study magic.

“In the spring of last year.”

“But you have achieved so much!” cried Mr Honeyfoot. “And in less than two years! My dear Mr Strange, it is quite remarkable!”

“Oh! Do you think so? It seems to me that I have hardly done any thing. But then, I have not known where to turn for advice. You are the first of my brother-magicians that I ever met with, and I give you fair warning that I intend to make you sit up half the night answering questions.”

“We shall be delighted to help you in any way we can,” said Mr Segundus, “But I very much doubt that we can be of much service to you. We have only ever been theoretical magicians.”

“You are much too modest,” declared Strange. “Consider, for example, how much more extensive your reading has been than mine.”

So Mr Segundus began to suggest authors whom Strange might not yet have heard of and Strange began to scribble down their names and works in a somewhat haphazard fashion, sometimes writing in a little memorandum book and other times writing upon the back of the dinner bill and once upon the back of his hand. Then he began to question Mr Segundus about the books.

Poor Mr Honeyfoot! How he longed to take part in this interesting conversation! How, in fact, he did take part in it, deceiving no one but himself by his little stratagems. “Tell him he must read Thomas Lanchester’s The Language of Birds,” he said, addressing Mr Segundus, rather than Strange. “Oh!” he said. “I know you have no opinion of it, but I think one may learn many things from Lanchester.”

Whereupon Mr Strange told them how, to his certain knowledge, there had been four copies of The Language of Birds in England not more than five years ago: one in a Gloucester bookseller’s; one in the private library of a gentleman-magician in Kendal; one the property of a blacksmith near Penzance who had taken it in part payment for mending an iron-gate; and one stopping a gap in a window of the boys’ school in the close of Durham Cathedral.

“But where are they now?” cried Mr Honeyfoot. “Why did you not purchase a copy?”

“By the time that I came to each place Norrell had got there before me and bought them all,” said Mr Strange. “I never laid eyes upon the man, and yet he thwarts me at every turn. That is why I hit upon this plan of summoning up some dead magician and asking him – or her – questions. I fancied a lady might be more sympathetic to my plight, and so I chose Miss Absalom.”⁵