“As razors, Mr Gemp.”
“Are they now? Well, that’s a blessing. Fire-proof, I suppose?” he added, nodding towards the safe.
“Fire-proof, burglar-proof, bank-proof, Mr Gemp,” said the manager smiling. “Dixons’ neglect nothing for the safety of their customers.”
“No, they don’t, do they?” said Mr Gemp, holding on very tightly to the stick, keeping himself down as it were and safe as well.
“No, sir, they neglect nothing.”
“I say,” said Mr Gemp, leaning forward, after a glance over his shoulder towards the bank counter, and Mr Thickens’s back, dimly seen through the muslin, “does the new parson bank here?”
The manager smiled, and looked very hard at the bulge in his visitor’s breast pocket, a look which involuntarily made the old man change the position of his hooked stick by bringing it down across his breast as if to protect the contents.
“Now, my dear Mr Gemp, you do not expect an answer to that question. Do you suppose I have ever told anybody that you have been here three times to ask me whether Dixons’ would advance you a hundred pounds at five per cent?”
“On good security, eh?” interposed the old man sharply; “only on good security.”
“Exactly, my dear sir. Why, you don’t suppose we make advances without?”