"I'll trouble you for that packet," he said; and, remorselessly clutching a bundle made up with red tape to resemble a process, he took out a written pleading, to which the signature of a counsel, now ten years in the grave, was appended.
"What a devil of a time these lawsuits last!" remarked Mr Dodger, unfolding another document. Worse and worse! It was the juvenile production of a judge in the Inner-House. I had nothing for it but to make a clean breast.
"The fact is, my dear uncle," said I, "these papers are just part of the furniture of a lawyer's room. It would never do, you know, to have an empty table, if an agent should happen to come in; but the real truth of the matter is, that the only agents I know are lads with as little business as myself, who sometimes look in of an evening to solace themselves with a cigar."
"I knew it, Fred—I knew it!" said Scripio, rubbing his hands, as if he thought it a remarkably good joke; "there are tricks in all trades, my boy, and the American blood will break out. But you can't do for me, though, you cunning young villain. Oh no! though you wanted to try it on." And he chuckled as heartily as any of Mr Dickens' characters in the Christmas Carol.
"So you ar'n't making a farthing, Freddy?" he resumed; "I'm glad of it. You'll never grease your coach-wheels here. Where's the thousand pounds that were lent over the Invertumblers estate?"
"Mr Constat, the agent of old M'Alcohol, paid it to me about three months ago," replied I, rather astonished at the question, which seemed to have no connexion with the former subject. "I have put it into the National Bank."
"Two per cent? Pshaw—trash!" said my uncle. "Here, look at this;" and he shoved a printed paper into my hands.
It was headed, "Prospectus of the Grand Union Biggleswade, Puddockfield, and Pedlington Railway, in 50,000 shares of £20 each. Deposit £1 on each share." If the line had run through the garden of Eden, supposing that place to have furnished a large passenger traffic besides agricultural produce, with London at one terminus and Pekin at the other, the description could not have been more flattering than that which I perused. Nature seemed to have lavished all her blessings upon Biggleswade, Puddockfield, and the country thereunto adjacent; in short, I never recollect so flattering a picture, with one solitary exception drawn by my friend Frizzle, who had stuck twenty pounds into some railway in a mineral district. "When we recollect," said Bob in a burst of poetical frenzy, "the enormous population of the district, the softness and geniality of the climate, and the fairy aspect of its scenery—when we think of the varied traffic which now chokes up the ordinary avenues of industry—when we estimate the inexhaustible beds of ore and minerals, absolutely heaving themselves from the ground, as though to entreat the aid of man in adapting them to their proper destination;—when we consider all these things, I say, and finally combine them together, fancy closes her astonished eyes, and even imagination swoons!" I will not say that the writer of the Biggleswade prospectus was as soaring a genius as Bob; but he was quite enough of a Claude to seduce the investing public. I forget what amount of return he promised, but it was something hitherto unheard of, and my mouth watered as I read.
"That's the spec!" said my uncle Dodger. "Sit down and write me an order for your thousand."
"Eh, uncle—for the whole?" said I somewhat aghast.