Jonas received this compliment with anything but a good grace, perhaps because of his own private sentiments in reference to the personal appearance of his deceased parent; perhaps because he was not best pleased to find that Montague and Tigg were one. That gentleman perceived it, and tapping him familiarly on the sleeve, beckoned him to the window. From this moment, Mr. Montague's jocularity and flow of spirits were remarkable.
`Do you find me at all changed since that time?' he asked. `Speak plainly.'
Jonas looked hard at his waistcoat and jewels; and said `Rather ecod!'
`Was I at all seedy in those days?' asked Montague.
`Precious seedy,' said Jonas.
Mr. Montague pointed down into the street, where Bailey and the cab were in attendance.
`Neat: perhaps dashing. Do you know whose it is?'
`No.'
`Mine. Do you like this room?'
`It must have cost a lot of money,' said Jonas.
`You're right. Mine too. Why don't you'--he whispered this, and nudged him in the side with his elbow--`why don't you take premiums, instead of paying 'em? That's what a man like you should do. Join us!'
Jonas stared at him in amazement.
`Is that a crowded street?' asked Montague, calling his attention to the multitude without.
`Very,' said Jonas, only glancing at it, and immediately afterwards looking at him again.
`There are printed calculations,' said his companion, `which will tell you pretty nearly how many people will pass up and down that thoroughfare in the course of a day. I can tell you how many of 'em will come in here, merely because they find this office here; knowing no more about it than they do of the Pyramids. Ha, ha! Join us. You shall come in cheap.'
Jonas looked at him harder and harder.
`I can tell you,' said Tigg in his ear, `how many of 'em will buy annuities, effect insurances, bring us their money in a hundred shapes and ways, force it upon us, trust us as if we were the Mint; yet know no more about us than you do of that crossing-sweeper at the corner. Not so much. Ha, ha!'
Jonas gradually broke into a smile.
`Yah!' said Montague, giving him a pleasant thrust in the breast; `you're too deep for us, you dog, or I wouldn't have told you. Dine with me to-morrow, in Pall Mall!'
`I will' said Jonas.
`Done!' cried Montague. `Wait a bit. Take these papers with you and look 'em over. See,' he said, snatching some printed forms from the table.
`B is a little tradesman, clerk, parson, artist, author, any common thing you like.'
`Yes,' said Jonas, looking greedily over his shoulder. `Well!'
`B wants a loan. Say fifty or a hundred pound; perhaps more; no matter.
B proposes self and two securities. B is accepted. Two securities give a bond. B assures his own life for double the amount, and brings two friends' lives also--just to patronise the office. Ha ha, ha! Is that a good notion?'
`Ecod, that's a capital notion!' cried Jonas. `But does he really do it?'
`Do it!' repeated the chairman. `B's hard up, my good fellow, and will do anything. Don't you see? It's my idea.'
`It does you honour. I'm blest if it don't,' said Jonas.
`I think it does,' replied the chairman, `and I'm proud to hear you say so. B pays the highest lawful interest--'
`That an't much,' interrupted Jonas.
`Right! quite right!' retorted Tigg. `And hard it is upon the part of the law that it should be so confoundedly down upon us unfortunate victims; when it takes such amazing good interest for itself from all its clients.
But charity begins at home, and justice begins next door. Well! The law being hard upon us, we're not exactly soft upon B; for besides charging B the regular interest, we get B's premium, and B's friends' premiums, and we charge B for the bond, and, whether we accept him or not, we charge B for "inquiries" (we keep a man, at a pound a week, to make 'em), and we charge B a trifle for the secretary; and in short, my good fellow, we stick it into B, up hill and down dale, and make a devilish comfortable little property out of him. Ha, ha ha! I drive B, in point of fact,' said Tigg, pointing to the cabriolet, `and a thoroughbred horse he is. Ha, ha, ha!'
Jonas enjoyed this joke very much indeed. It was quite in his peculiar vein of humour.
`Then,' said Tigg Montague, `we grant annuities on the very lowest and most advantageous terms known in the money market; and the old ladies and gentlemen down in the country buy 'em. Ha, ha, ha! And we pay 'em too--perhaps.
Ha, ha, ha!'
`But there's responsibility in that,' said Jonas, looking doubtful.
`I take it all myself,' said Tigg Montague. `Here I am responsible for everything. The only responsible person in the establishment! Ha, ha, ha!
Then there are the Life Assurances without loans: the common policies.
Very profitable, very comfortable. Money down, you know; repeated every year; capital fun!'
`But when they begin to fall in,' observed Jonas. `It's all very well, while the office is young, but when the policies begin to die; that's what I am thinking of.'
`At the first start, my dear fellow,' said Montague, `to show you how correct your judgment is, we had a couple of unlucky deaths that brought us down to a grand piano.'
`Brought you down where?' cried Jonas.