The establishment was fitted up in the best possible style, with mahogany desks; the counting-house was very much like a bank, the whole of the monetary business of the great company, as well as that of Mr. Tallant, being conducted in town. Behind the counting-house was Mr. Christopher Tallant’s room, and that of his son Richard.
Mr. Tallant’s room was plainly but well furnished, and was only occupied once a week; but Mr. Richard’s room was fitted up in the highest style of office magnificence, like a gentleman’s library. There was a thick velvet-pile carpet upon the floor, a massive carved mahogany table in the centre of the room; several ponderous chairs with morocco seats; a quaint arm-chair stood before a writing-pad near the table. Where there were no book-shelves there were pictures of engines, and iron bridges, and curious girders, and wheels, in ponderous frames; and thick cloth curtains draped the two windows which looked into the street.
The offices were famous amongst men in the iron trade, and once or twice Mr. Tallant began to think they were getting a name politically; for several deputations had waited upon him there soliciting him to come forward for various boroughs at general elections.
But Mr. Christopher Tallant always said his ambition did not lie that way. Some day perhaps his son Dick might like to go into the House, and if he did, why go he should of course; but there was plenty of time to think about that; and so the deputations retired, wishing, in most cases, that there were not plenty of time to think about that, for there was gold indeed at the back of Christopher Tallant.
“By gad, you amuse me,” said Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs, a college acquaintance of Mr. Richard Tallant’s, looking at the pictorial treasures of the room through an eye-glass. “To think of your going in for engines and machines, with idiotic cranks, and all that sort of thing. ’Pon my soul, it’s too funny.”
And Mr. Shuffleton Gibbs turned round, showed Mr. Richard Tallant his teeth, and said “haw, haw.” That was the way Mr. Gibbs laughed: that was how he laughed at Oxford, when a broken-hearted girl appealed to his sense of honour; that was how he laughed when he won two thousand pounds at Loo from a college friend, who said he was ruined, and threatened to throw himself into the Isis; that was how he laughed under all circumstances.
“One must put a sign of some sort up,” said Mr. Richard Tallant, twirling his moustache, and stretching his legs under the big library table. “What will you take, Shuff?”
“Anything you intend taking yourself, old boy; you are a pretty good judge; I’ll trust to your sense of what a fellow’s morning draught should be,” said Mr. Gibbs, grinning again, and saying “haw, haw” as before.
Mr. Tallant, junior, struck a gong upon the table, and a sober-looking old man in a dark livery obeyed the summons.
“Sherry, Thomas,” said Mr. Richard.