Report on Probability A Read Online Free Page B

painted with a brown paint twenty-six months previously, when G had been in Mr. Mary’s employ. G opened the gate and stepped into the road.
    The road ran almost due north-west. It was wide and had pavements on both sides of it. Its surface was of a dark crumbly texture. On either side stood high brick walls, generally surmounted by embedded pieces of broken bottles, or railings painted green and ending in shapes like spears pointing to the sky; here and there were a private brewery, or shops at which tickets might be bought to enable one to travel to other towns in comfortable motor coaches, or large greenhouses shaped of glass and iron in which flowers and other things which had recently been growing might be bought; opposite the house was a café; at the far end of the road looking south-east were a cross of white marble and a group of lamp standards; there was also, behind the cross and the lamp standards, a low building with pillars along its front which was a railway station; from it came the sound of trains.
    G waited beside a lamppost that stood on the pavement near the house and listened to the sound of trains. At the same time, he scanned the road to see if any cars were approaching from either direction. Because there were no cars, he crossed the road and went into the café.
    Over the café ran a long board on which, in two sorts of letters, were printed the words “Stationer Family G. F. WATT Grocer Café Snacks Draper.”
    G. F. Watt struggled with a machine that made noises as it sucked dirt off the floor; he was too busy to move out of G’s way. G squeezed between him and a large case that contained brightly coloured paper books and sat down at a small square table covered by a cloth printed with a design of red and white squares. G recognized the cloth. He put his hands on it as he sat down on a chair of wood constructed so that it could fold up into a small space when not in use. As G knew from a demonstration he had been given, the chair folded up efficiently, although it was not comfortable to sit on. G remembered he had once had an uncle who had sat on a chair which collapsed; G had not seen this happen, but the uncle had related the incident to him. The uncle had laughed when he related the incident.
    Working methodically, G. F. Watt pushed the machine to the further end of the shop; there he switched it off and took it behind the counter, where he disappeared with it through a small door covered with an advertisement for a circus, leaving G alone in the café.
    Through the café window, the front of the house could be seen; G surveyed it with care. The front door was reached by ascending two curved steps and was sheltered by a heavy stone porch, also curved, and supported by two stone pillars. To the left and the right of this door were windows. The window on the right—that is, the window nearest to the brown side gate—belonged to the sitting-room; the window to the left belonged to Mr. Mary’s study. On the first floor were three windows; the one on the right, over the sitting-room, belonged to the room that was Mr. Mary’s bedroom, as did the one in the middle over the front door, thus constituting the third window to this bedroom, the first one being the small bow window on the north-west side of the house visible from the wooden bungalow; the window on the left belonged to Mr. Mary’s wife’s bedroom. It had red curtains. Above these windows on the first floor, which were each of the same size and smaller than the two windows on the ground floor, was the line of the roof. The angles of the roof were capped by carved stone, as was the roof tree, which bore a weathered stone urn at each end. The roof was covered by blue-grey slates. In the middle of it was a small dormer window; this window belonged to the attic; projecting from the woodwork immediately above this small window was a white flagpole no more than a metre in length, which bore no flag. G