at
this minute David, and were to pay it (which is most confoundedly
improbable), I should rise, in a mental point of view, directly.'

It is due to Mr Tigg to say that he had really risen with his
opportunities; and, peculating on a grander scale, he had become a
grander man altogether.

'Ha, ha,' cried the secretary, laying his hand, with growing
familiarity, upon the chairman's arm. 'When I look at you, and think of
your property in Bengal being--ha, ha, ha!--'

The half-expressed idea seemed no less ludicrous to Mr Tigg than to his
friend, for he laughed too, heartily.

'--Being,' resumed David, 'being amenable--your property in Bengal being
amenable--to all claims upon the company; when I look at you and think
of that, you might tickle me into fits by waving the feather of a pen at
me. Upon my soul you might!'

'It a devilish fine property,' said Tigg Montague, 'to be amenable
to any claims. The preserve of tigers alone is worth a mint of money,
David.'

David could only reply in the intervals of his laughter, 'Oh, what a
chap you are!' and so continued to laugh, and hold his sides, and wipe
his eyes, for some time, without offering any other observation.

'A capital idea?' said Tigg, returning after a time to his companion's
first remark; 'no doubt it was a capital idea. It was my idea.'

'No, no. It was my idea,' said David. 'Hang it, let a man have some
credit. Didn't I say to you that I'd 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 to 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 entir