"Damn clever fellow," said my uncle, after he had gone. "I know a man when I see one. He'll do. Bit drunk, I should say. But that only makes some chaps brighter. If he wants to do that poster, he can. Zzzz. That ideer of his about the horseradish. There's something in that, George. I'm going to think over that. . . ."
I may say at once that my poster project came to nothing in the end, though Ewart devoted an interesting week to the matter. He let his unfortunate disposition to irony run away with him. He produced a picture of two Beavers with a subtle likeness, he said, to myself and my uncle—the likeness to my uncle certainly wasn't half bad—and they were bottling rows and rows of Tono-Bungay, with the legend "Modern Commerce." It certainly wouldn't have sold a case, though he urged it on me one cheerful evening on the ground that it would "arouse curiosity." In addition he produced a quite shocking study of my uncle, excessively and needlessly nude but, so far as I was able to judge, an admirable likeness, engaged in feats of strength of a Gargantuan type before an audience of deboshed and shattered ladies. The legend, "Health, Beauty, Strength" below, gave a needed point to his parody. This he hung up in the studio over the oil shop, with a flap of brown paper by way of a curtain over it to accentuate its libellous offence.
