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The pictures arrived at the museum one Saturday afternoon, just after Mr Williams had left. They were brought round to his rooms in college so that he could look at them over the weekend. Mr Williams found them on his table when he and his friend, Mr Binks, came in to have tea.
一个周六的下午这些作品被送到了博物馆，这时威廉斯先生刚离开。于是这些画又被转到他在学院的住所，以便周末就能让他看到。威廉斯先生和朋友宾克斯先生进屋喝茶时发现了桌子上的那些画。
Picture Number978 showed the front of quite a large country house. It had three rows of windows with the door in the middle of the bottom row. There were trees on both sides of the house and a large lawn in front of it. The letters A. W. F. were written in the corner of the picture. Mr Williams thought that it was not very well done, probably the work of an amateur artist, and he could not understand why Mr Britnell thought it was worth twenty pounds. He turned it over and saw that there was a piece of paper on the back with part of a name on it. All he could read were the ends of two lines of Writing The first said, '—ngly Hall'；the second, '—ssex'.
第978号作品画的是一座乡村大住房的正面。房子有三排窗户，门在底部那排的中间。住房的两侧是树，前面有一大块草地，画的一角写着A．W．F．几个字母。威廉斯先生觉得这幅画画得不怎么样，可能出自业余画家之手，他不明白为什么布里耐尔先生觉得它值20英镑。他把画翻过来发现后面有张纸，上面写着个不完整的名字。他能看到的只有两行字的结尾，第一行为“——宁利府”，第二行为“——塞克斯”。
Mr Williams thought that it would be interesting to see if he could find the name of the house in one of his guidebooks be－ fore sending the picture back on Monday morning. Meanwhile, he put the picture on the table, lit the lamp because it was now getting dark, and made the tea.
威廉斯先生想看看周一上午把画寄回之前能不能在自己的某本旅行指南中找到这座房子的名字，他觉得这样做挺有意思的。他把画放在桌子上，这时天渐渐黑了，于是他点上灯，沏上了茶。
While they were having tea, his friend picked up the picture, looked at it and said, Where's this house, Williams?'
他们喝着茶，他的朋友拿起那幅画看着问道：“威廉斯，这座房子在哪儿？”
'That's just what I was going to find out, 'said Williams, taking a book from the shelf.
“我正想查找一下呢，”威廉斯先生说着从书架上取下一本书。
