prayerbooks at Bladesover there used to be illustrations with long
scrolls coming out of the mouths of the wood-cut figures. I wish I could
write all this last chapter on a scroll coming out of the head of my
uncle, show it all the time as unfolding and pouring out from a short,
fattening, small-legged man with stiff cropped hair, disobedient glasses
on a perky little nose, and a round stare behind them. I wish I could
show you him breathing hard and a little through his nose as his pen
scrabbled out some absurd inspiration for a poster or a picture page,
and make you hear his voice, charged with solemn import like the voice
of a squeaky prophet, saying, "George! list'n! I got an ideer. I got a
notion! George!"

I should put myself into the same picture. Best setting for us, I think,
would be the Beckenham snuggery, because there we worked hardest. It
would be the lamplit room of the early nineties, and the clock upon the
mantel would indicate midnight or later. We would be sitting on either
side of the fire, I with a pipe, my uncle with a cigar or cigarette.
There would be glasses standing inside the brass fender. Our expressions
would be very grave. My uncle used to sit right back in his armchair;
his toes always turned in when he was sitting down and his legs had a
way of looking curved, as though they hadn't bones or joints but were
stuffed with sawdust.

"George, whad'yer think of T.B. for sea-sickness?" he would say.

"No good that I can imagine."

"Oom! No harm TRYING, George. We can but try."

I would suck my pipe. "Hard to get at. Unless we sold our stuff