Chapter 6 Mr Robinson（3）

III
In the afternoon Tommy had another interview arranged. This timewith a sad, grizzled man sitting in an office and obviously grudging¹ thetime he was giving Tommy.
‘Well, I really couldn’t say. Of course I know roughly what you’re talkingabout–lot of talk about it at the time–caused a big political blow-up–but Ireally have no information about that sort of thing, you know. No. Yousee, these things, they don’t last, do they? They soon pass out of one’s mindonce the Press gets hold of some other juicy scandal.’
He opened up slightly on a few of his own interesting moments in lifewhen something he’d never suspected came suddenly to light or his suspi-cions had suddenly been aroused by some very peculiar² event. He said:
‘Well, I’ve just got one thing might help. Here’s an address for you andI’ve made an appointment too. Nice chap. Knows everything. He’s thetops, you know, absolutely the tops. One of my daughters was a godchildof his. That’s why he’s awfully³ nice to me and will always do me a goodturn if possible. So I asked him if he would see you. I said there were somethings you wanted the top news about, I said what a good chap you wereand various things and he said yes, he’d heard of you already. Knew some-thing about you, and he said, Of course come along. Three forty-five, Ithink. Here’s the address. It’s an office in the City, I think. Ever met him?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Tommy, looking at the card and the address. ‘No.’
‘Well you wouldn’t think he knew anything, to look at him, I mean. Big,you know, and yellow.’
‘Oh,’ said Tommy, ‘big and yellow.’
It didn’t really convey much information to his mind.
‘He’s the tops,’ said Tommy’s grizzled friend, ‘absolute tops. You goalong there. He’ll be able to tell you something anyway. Good luck, oldchap.’

1 grudging   

adj.勉强的，吝啬的

参考例句：

• He felt a grudging respect for her talents as an organizer.他勉强地对她的组织才能表示尊重。
• After a pause he added"sir."in a dilatory,grudging way.停了一会他才慢吞吞地、勉勉强强地加了一声“先生”。

2 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

3 awfully   

adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地

参考例句：

• Agriculture was awfully neglected in the past.过去农业遭到严重忽视。
• I've been feeling awfully bad about it.对这我一直感到很难受。