I swear to you I thought at first it was a flimsy suit of clothes had left some bedside and walked into my room without waiting for the owner to get up, or that it was one of those frames on which clothiers stretch coats at their shop-doors, until I perceived a thin face, sticking edgeways out of the collar of the coat like the axe in a bundle of fasces.

As to getting in a word edgeways with the men over the cigarsperfectly impossible!