It
opened out of the upper end of Farringdon Street, and 192A was a shop
with the plate-glass front coloured chocolate, on which several of the
same bills I had read upon the hoardings had been stuck. The floor was
covered by street mud that had been brought in on dirty boots, and three
energetic young men of the hooligan type, in neck-wraps and caps, were
packing wooden cases with papered-up bottles, amidst much straw and
confusion. The counter was littered with these same swathed bottles, of
a pattern then novel but now amazingly familiar in the world, the blue
paper with the coruscating figure of a genially nude giant, and the
printed directions of how under practically all circumstances to take
Tono-Bungay. Beyond the counter on one side opened a staircase down
which I seem to remember a girl descending with a further consignment
of bottles, and the rest of the background was a high partition, also
chocolate, with "Temporary Laboratory" inscribed upon it in white
letters, and over a door that pierced it, "Office." Here I rapped,
inaudible amid much hammering, and then entered unanswered to find
my uncle, dressed as I have described, one hand gripping a sheath of
letters, and the other scratching his head as he dictated to one of
three toiling typewriter girls.
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