‘It hasn’t begun yet. I can only lay my hand on a few hundred pounds, one way and another. And I’m turned thirty. But the next ten years are going to do it. Do you know what I did last Saturday? I got fifteen hundred pounds’ worth of advertising for our people, from a chap that’s never yet put a penny into the hands of an agent. I went down and talked to him like a father. He was the hardest nut I ever had to crack, but in thirty-five minutes I’d got him—like a roach on a hook. And it’ll be to his advantage, mind you. That fifteen hundred ‘ll bring him in more business than he’s had for ten years past. I got him to confess he was going down the hill. “Of course,” I said, “because you don’t know how to advertise, and won’t let anybody else know for you?” In a few minutes he was telling me he’d dropped more than a thousand on a patent that was out of date before it got fairly going. “All right,” said I. “Here’s your new cooking-stove. You’ve dropped a thousand on the other thing; give your advertising to us, and I’ll guarantee you shall come home on the cooking-stove.”’
‘Come home on it?’ Nancy inquired, in astonishment.
‘Oh, it’s our way of talking,’ said the other, with his hearty laugh. ‘It means to make up one’s loss. And he’ll do it. And when he has, he’ll think no end of me.’
‘I daresay.’
‘Not long ago, I boxed a chap for his advertising. A fair turn-up with the gloves. Do you suppose I licked him? Not I; though I could have done it with one hand. I just let him knock me out of time, and two minutes after he put all his business into my hands.’
‘Oh, you’ll get rich,’ declared Nancy, laughing. ‘No doubt about it.’
‘There was a spot down the South Western Railway where we wanted to stick up a board, a great big board, as ugly as they make ‘em. It was in a man’s garden; a certain particular place, where the trains slow, and folks have time to read the advertisement and meditate on it. That chap wouldn’t listen. What! spoil his garden with our da——with our confounded board! not for five hundred a year! Well, I went down, and I talked to him—’
‘Like a father,’ put in Nancy.
‘Just so, like a father. “Look here,” said I, “my dear sir, you’re impeding the progress of civilisation. How could we have become what we are without the modern science and art of advertising? Till advertising sprang up, the world was barbarous. Do you suppose people kept themselves clean before they were reminded at every corner of the benefits of soap? Do you suppose they were healthy before every wall and hoarding told them what medicine to take for their ailments? Not they indeed! Why, a man like you—an enlightened man, I see it in your face (he was as ugly as Ben’s bull-dog), ought to be proud of helping on the age.” And I made him downright ashamed of himself. He asked me to have a bit of dinner, and we came to terms over the cheese.’
In this strain did Luckworth Crewe continue to talk across the gloomy solitudes of Soho. And Nancy would on no account have had him cease. She was fascinated by his rough vigour and by his visions of golden prosperity. It seemed to her that they reached very quickly the restaurant he had in view. With keen enjoyment of the novelty, she followed him between tables where people were eating, drinking, smoking, and took a place beside him on a cushioned seat at the end of the room.