Manchurian Books

Presently he was leading the way to the lounge--sumptuous piece in red
morocco and yellow glazed crockery, with incredible vistas of settees
and sofas and things, and there I found myself grouped with him in two
excessively upholstered chairs with an earthenware Moorish table between
us bearing coffee and Benedictine, and I was tasting the delights of a
tenpenny cigar. My uncle smoked a similar cigar in an habituated manner,
and he looked energetic and knowing and luxurious and most unexpectedly
a little bounder, round the end of it. It was just a trivial flaw
upon our swagger, perhaps that we both were clear our cigars had to be
"mild." He got obliquely across the spaces of his great armchair so as
to incline confidentially to my ear, he curled up his little legs, and
I, in my longer way, adopted a corresponding receptive obliquity. I felt
that we should strike an unbiased observer as a couple of very deep and
wily and developing and repulsive persons.
"I want to let you into this"--puff--"George," said my uncle round the
end of his cigar.


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