And the boom would begin as soon as the news of the agreement about the railway got abroad.
I let him get it out of me in a way that makes the thought of that bare place with its gilt book-backs and its three uncomfortable office-chairs and the ground-glass windows through which one read the inversion of the legend "Polehampton," all its gloom and its rigid lines and its pallid light, a memory of confusion.

And Polehampton was properly grateful, and invited me to dine with him and his phantasmal daughter--who wanted to make my acquaintance.

It was like a command to a state banquet given by a palace official, and Lea would be invited to meet me.

Miss Polehampton did not like Lea, but he had to be asked once a year--to encourage good feeling, I suppose.

The interview dribbled out on those lines.