Usually there would
be a parson or so, and one or two widows; hairy, eyeglassy, middle-aged
gentlemen, some of them looking singularly like Edward Ponderevos
who hadn't come off, a variety of young and youngish men more or less
attractively dressed, some with papers protruding from their pockets,
others with their papers decently concealed. And wonderful, incidental,
frowsy people.
All these persons maintained a practically hopeless siege--sometimes for
weeks 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.
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