eeks together; they had better have stayed at home. Next came a room
full of people who had some sort of appointment, and here one would find
smart-looking people, brilliantly dressed, nervous women hiding behind
magazines, nonconformist divines, clergy in gaiters, real business men,
these latter for the most part gentlemen in admirable morning dress who
stood up and scrutinised my uncle's taste in water colours manfully and
sometimes by the hour together. Young men again were here of various
social origins, young Americans, treasonable clerks from other concerns,
university young men, keen-looking, most of them, resolute, reserved,
but on a sort of hair trigger, ready at any moment to be most voluble,
most persuasive.

This room had a window, too, looking out into the hotel courtyard with
its fern-set fountains and mosaic pavement, and the young men would
stand against this and sometimes even mutter. One day I heard one
repeating in all urgent whisper as I passed "But you don't quite see,
Mr. Ponderevo, the full advantages, the FULL advantages--" I met his eye
and he was embarrassed.

Then came a room with a couple of secretaries--no typewriters, because
my uncle hated the clatter--and a casual person or two sitting about,
projectors whose projects were being entertained. Here and in a further
room nearer the private apartments, my uncle's correspondence underwent
an exhaustive process of pruning and digestion before it reached him.
Then the two little rooms in which my uncle talked; my magic uncle who
had got the investing public--to whom all things were possible. As one
came in we would find him squatting with his cigar up and an expression
of dubious beatitude upon his face, while some one urged him to grow
still richer by this or that.

"That'ju, George?" he used to say. "Come in. Here's a thing. Tell
him--Mister--over again. Have a drink, George? No! Wise man! Liss'n."

I was always ready to listen. All sorts of financial marvels came out of
the Hardingham, more particularly during my uncle's last great flurry,
but they were nothing to the projects that passed in. It was the little
brown and gold room he sat in usually. He had had it redecorated by
Bordingly and half a dozen Sussex pictures by Webster hung about it.
Latterly he wore a velveteen jacket of a golden-brown colour in this
apartment that I think over-emphasised its esthetic intention, and he
also added some gross Chinese bronzes.

He was, on the wh