“Tono-Bungay,” said my uncle very slowly and distinctly.
I thought he was asking me to hear some remote, strange noise. “I don’t
hear anything,” I said reluctantly to his expectant face. He smiled
undefeated. “Try again,” he said, and repeated, “Tono-Bungay.”
“Oh, _that!_” I said.
“Eh?” said he.
“But what is it?”
“Ah!” said my uncle, rejoicing and expanding. “What _is_ it? That’s
what you got to ask? What _won’t_ it be?” He dug me violently in what
he supposed to be my ribs. “George,” he cried—“George, watch this
place! There’s more to follow.”
And that was all I could get from him.
That, I believe, was the very first time that the words Tono-Bungay
ever heard on earth—unless my uncle indulged in monologues in his
chamber—a highly probable thing. Its utterance certainly did not seem
to me at the time to mark any sort of epoch, and had I been told this
word was the Open Sesame to whatever pride and pleasure the grimy front
of London hid from us that evening, I should have laughed aloud.
“Coming now to business,” I said after a pause, and with a chill sense
of effort; and I opened the question of his trust.
My uncle sighed, and leant back in his chair. “I wish I could make all
this business as clear to you as it is to me,” he said. “However—Go on!
Say what you have to say.”