fit his nose, fretted with things in his waistcoat-pockets or put his hands behind him, looked over our heads, and ever and again rose to his toes and dropped back on his heels. He had a way of drawing air in at times through his teeth that gave a whispering zest to his speech. It's a sound I can only represent as a soft Zzzz.
He did most of the talking. My mother repeated what she had already said in the shop, "I have brought George over to you," and then desisted for a time from the real business in hand. "You find this a comfortable house?" she asked; and this being affirmed: "It looks—very convenient. . . . Not too big to be a trouble—no. You like Wimblehurst, I suppose?"
My uncle retorted with some inquiries about the great people of Bladesover, and my mother answered in the character of a personal friend of Lady Drew's. The talk hung for a time, and then my uncle embarked upon a dissertation upon Wimblehurst.
"This place," he began, "isn't of course quite the place I ought to be in."
My mother nodded as though she had expected that.
"It gives me no Scope," he went on. "It's dead-and-alive. Nothing happens."
"He's always wanting something to happen," said my aunt Susan. "Some day he'll get a shower of things and they'll be too much for him."
"Not they," said my uncle, buoyantly.
"Do you find business—slack?" asked my mother.
"Oh! one rubs along. But there's no Development—no Growth. They just come along here and buy pills when they want 'em—and a horseball or such. They've got to be ill before there's a prescription. That sort they are. You can"t get 'em to launch out, you can't get 'em to take up anything new. F'rinstance.
