But I
thought so little of these later things that I never fully appreciated
the peculiar inconveniences of that until it was too late to help him.
III
When I think of my uncle near the days of his Great Boom and in
connection with the actualities of his enterprises, I think of him as
I used to see him in the suite of rooms he occupied in the Hardingham
Hotel, seated at a great old oak writing-table, smoking, drinking, and
incoherently busy; that was his typical financial aspect--our evenings,
our mornings, our holidays, our motor-car expeditions, Lady Grove and
Crest Hill belong to an altogether different set of memories.
These rooms in the Hardingham were a string of apartments along one
handsome thick-carpeted corridor. All the doors upon the corridor were
locked except the first; and my uncle's bedroom, breakfast-room and
private sanctum were the least accessible and served by an entrance from
the adjacent passage, which he also used at times as a means of
escape from importunate callers. The most eternal room was a general
waiting-room and very business-like in quality; it had one or two uneasy
sofas, a number of chairs, a green baize table, and a collection of the
very best Moggs and Tone posters: and the plush carpets normal to the
Hardingham had been replaced by a grey-green cork linoleum; Here I
would always find a remarkable miscellany of people presided over by
a peculiarly faithful and ferocious looking commissioner, Ropper, who
guarded the door that led a step nearer my uncle.
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