About this story
Uncle Edward offers excuses instead of accounts, and marches you past Park Lane to explain what strategy looks like from outside those windows. Back behind lowered blinds, he unveils the scheme itself: Tono-Bungay, a name built to sound ancient and scientific, attached to a bottle that promises recovery rather than containing it. A creditor is already at the shutter when he finishes explaining.
How it opens
January drizzle glazed the London pavement outside your uncle's narrow, brilliantly lit shop.
George! You have arrived exactly when a family face improves the window.
He whisked out in carpet slippers, older and rounder than the clever boy your mother remembered.
Aunt SusanCome upstairs before Teddy sells you something merely for standing still.
Choose
Uncle, Mother needs an account of every pound placed with you.
Show me the partnership papers before we speak of another family matter.