He expounded the qualities of his whisky--a present from old man Jornicroft, a rare blend which just a few "merchantates" (Barbara's word, he declared, was delicious) in Glasgow and Dundee and here and there a one in the City of London were able to procure.

In its flavour, said he, lurked the mystery of strange and barbaric names.

He showed me a Bonington water colour which he had picked up for a song.

On enquiry as to the signification of a song as a unit of value, I learned that since eminent tenors and divas had sung into gramophones, the standard had appreciated.
"My dear man," he laughed, in answer to my protest.

"I can afford it." For the quarter of an hour that I spent with him in his own drawing-room, he was quite the old Adrian.