 saved a few pounds? -«
    »You said! Didn't I say to you,« interposed Tigg, »that I had come into a
few pounds?«
    »Certainly you did,« returned David, warmly, »but that's not the idea. Who
said, that if we put the money together we could furnish an office, and make a
show?«
    »And who said,« retorted Mr. Tigg, »that, provided we did it on a
sufficiently large scale, we could furnish an office and make a show, without
any money at all? Be rational, and just, and calm, and tell me whose idea was
that.«
    »Why there,« David was obliged to confess, »you had the advantage of me, I
admit. But I don't put myself on a level with you. I only want a little credit
in the business.«
    »All the credit you deserve you have,« said Tigg. »The plain work of the
company, David - figures, books, circulars, advertisements, pen, ink and paper,
sealing-wax and wafers - is admirably done by you. You are a first-rate
groveller. I don't dispute it. But the ornamental department, David; the
inventive and poetical department -«
    »Is entirely yours,« said his friend. »No question of it. But with such a
swell turn-out as this, and all the handsome things you've got about you, and
the life you lead, I mean to say it's a precious comfortable department too.«
    »Does it gain the purpose? Is it Anglo-Bengalee?« asked Tigg.
    »Yes,« said David.
    »Could you undertake it yourself?« demanded Tigg.
    »No,« said David.
    »Ha, ha!« laughed Tigg. »Then be contented with your station and your
profits, David, my fine fellow, and bless the day that made us acquainted across
the counter of our common uncle, for it was a golden day to you.«
    It will have been already gathered from the conversation of these worthies,
that they were embarked in an enterprise of some magnitude, in which they
addressed the public in general from the strong position of having everything to
gain, and nothing at all to lose; and which, based upon this great principle,
was thriving pretty comfortably.
    The Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company started
into existence one morning, not an Infant Institution, but a Grown-up
