Here's a link to a screenshot of what I see after changing the setting in reading preferences to ask before showing images as well as a screenshot of my settings page. There's no message about loading images and no images are displayed.
www.panix.com/~etk/fastmail/fastmail-images.html
I'm not sure why the setting doesn't work.
In case it's related, I have classic set to View/Web bug protection/Disable Images.
Thanks for your help, guys.
Ellen