"Security for the repayment? If you borrow from the Rainy. Day or Amicable Nest-Eggs Insurance Office, you must give two sureties, householders, and insure for double the amount of the loan. If you go to the Helping Hand or the Leg-up Loan Office, you must give three sureties, householders, and pay a lot for office-fees and inquiries, which are made by a dirty-faced man at a pound a week. If you give a bill of sale on your furniture--"
"My good sir," said Pringle testily, "I've got no furniture. And surely all this bother can't be necessary for the sum I want--only twenty pounds."
"Twenty pounds! twenty pounds! a fleabite, a mere fleabite!" said Mr. Rittman (he had three and sevenpence in his pocket at the moment, and did not know in the least where to turn for more). "I hoped you were going to call my generalship into play; for I may say, without boasting, that when it's not for myself, I am fertile in resources. But--twenty pounds--I'll give you the address of a man who'll let you have it at once."
"There won't be any names wanted, or any thing of that sort, will there?" asked Pringle, rather doubtful of this promptitude.
"Nothing of the kind; merely your acknowledgment. Here's the address--Scadgers, Newman Street. You'll find Mr. Scadgers a curious man, but very pleasant; and when you say you come from me, he'll be very polite. And, Mr. Pringle, let me give you one word of advice--Be firm in the matter of Madeira."
"In the matter of Madeira?"
"Yes, awful; you can't stand it. Ostades are bad enough, or a Stradivarius fiddle; and perhaps, as you're a single man in apartments, a key-bugle mightn't do, as likely to be objected to by the other lodgers--but any of them rather than the Madeira."
In the middle of Newman Street stands a paintless door, in the centre of which gleams a brass-plate, bearing the word "Scadgers," in fat Roman capitals. Nothing else. No "Mr.;" no description of Scadgers' profession; nothing to break the charm. "Scadgers" stands an oasis of shining brass in a desert of lustreless deal, and winks knowingly at the double-faced portrait, one half dirty, the other half clean, at the picture-restorer's over the way. Scadgers' door differed from its fellows in having but one bell-handle; for Scadgers had quite enough business to occupy the whole house, and to demand ramifications in the neighbourhood. All we have to do, in the course of this story, is to deal with Scadgers as Scadgers; but my private belief is that Scadgers was the Universal Philanthropic Man's a Man for a' that Loan Office, held at the Blue Pig and Toothache in Wells Street; that he was "Cash promptly advanced on furniture without removal, freehold and leasehold property, legacies, reversions, warrants, and all other securities. Sheriffs' executions and rent-distraint immediately paid out" (vide advertisement);--that he was "Methuselah's Muffin-Powder, or Never say Die" patent medicine, and proprietor-in-chief of "The Hob," a domestic Miscellany, which commenced with weak romance, and failed, but has since achieved an enormous success for itself, and a fortune for its spirited proprietor, by the publication of "Baby Clarence; or, My Life at Brompton." Certainly you could not have guessed Scadgers' occupation from the outside of his residence, which looked like a dirty lodging-house, like a third-rate boarding-house, like those melancholy houses occupied by those most melancholy people on earth, third-rate piano-sellers; like a house let in rooms to people who lithograph fashion-plates; like any thing but what it was--a house where more money was made than in nine-tenths of the houses in London.
When Mr. Pringle arrived on the Scadgerian steps, he looked for a knocker, and finding none, he pulled the Scadgerian bell. A responsive click and the partial unlatching of the door invited him to push; the door yielded, and he found himself in a large and empty hall, on one side of which was a glass door, with the word "Office" in faded gilt letters on a white ground. This glass-door being open, Mr. Pringle walked straight through, and found himself in the "office." He had seen a good many offices in his time, but never one like this. He had never seen an office with musical instruments in it before; and here were four or five pianos standing ranged against the wall, to say nothing of harps in leather cases leaning drunkenly in corners, and a few cornets-à-piston in green boxes, and a guitar or two with blue ribbons to hang them round your neck by, just as if they had come fresh from the necks of Spanish donnas. And there were slack-baked-looking old pictures in heavy Dutch-metal frames--fine specimens of old masters--saints with skulls and Bibles in front of them, and very ascetic cheek-bones and great phrenological development of talent and courage; Dutch boors standing on one leg and drinking glasses of ale, and yawning youths with an effect of shaded candlelight on their faces. There were modern pictures, too, of lakes and Thames scenery, and girls with fair hair, which, when compared with the old ones, looked as if they had been painted in milk-and-water; and there were three driving-whips in one corner, a set of harness across a chair, and the leather cushions of a brougham under it. There was a bronze umbrella-stand, formed by a dog holding a whip in his mouth, a big French clock, and a couple of chemist's bottles, red and green; and in the midst of all this confusion stood a little shrivelled old man, with very white hair and a very red face--a dirty little old man dressed in a rusty suit of black, who addressed Mr. Pringle in a rusty creaking voice, and wanted to know "his pleasure."
"I--I wish to speak to Mr. Scadgers," said Mr. Pringle, with a modesty and hesitation altogether strange to him.