"What annuity?" said I.
"Why, the five years' annuity you bought of old Goldfist. Is it possible you don't recollect him? Don't you remember the row of negro-houses you owned down in Southwark?"
"I don't," said I.
"A piece of arrant cheating! sheer swindling!" said Tickle; "but when did old Skinner ever make an honest bargain? The houses and lot of ground worth two thousand, as they stood; but title good and indefeisible, and capable of being made worth twenty thousand: I remember you offered 'em to old Goldfist for seven. What said the old hunks? 'Give me immediate possession, and thereupon you shall have a bonus of a thousand on the nail, together with the same sum yearly for five years, provided you live so long—if not, then as long as you live.' Snapped like a gudgeon, and was bit; and on the fifth year—beginning of August last, had the last integer of payment, with comfort of seeing a property you had sold for six thousand, yielding its possessor just that much a year."
"The geds!" said I; "has old Goldfist six thousand a year?"
"Say sixty," replied Jack.
"Tickle," said I, "the old curmudgeon has a daughter: I'll marry her."
"No you won't," said my friend, shaking his head mournfully: "old Goldfist is too well acquainted with your affairs; and unless you have his consent, what will you get by her?"
"Tickle," said I, "I must marry somebody, or be ruined. But stay, there's my uncle; now, my dear fellow, who is he?"
"Faith," said Tickle, "I don't know; always supposed he belonged to the Apocrypha, and was used to argue duns into good manners: nobody sues a young fellow that has good expectations from a rich uncle. But, now I think of it, I believe you did once tell me you had an uncle—some vagabond trading fellow or other—in the west; but I never heard you say you expected any thing of him. I thought you called him Wiggins; but Sniggles says Wilkins. All's one, however; for I remember you said he had brats of his own."