'What a chap you are!' exclaimed David admiringly, when this little
alarm had subsided.
'Say, genius, David, genius.'
'Well, upon my soul, you ARE a genius then,' said David. 'I always knew
you had the gift of the gab, of course; but I never believed you were
half the man you are. How could I?'
'I rise with circumstances, David. That's a point of genius in itself,'
said Tigg. 'If you were to lose a hundred pound wager to me at
this minute David, and were to pay it (which is most confoundedly
improbable), I should rise, in a mental point of view, directly.'
It is due to Mr Tigg to say that he had really risen with his
opportunities; and, peculating on a grander scale, he had become a
grander man altogether.
'Ha, ha,' cried the secretary, laying his hand, with growing
familiarity, upon the chairman's arm. 'When I look at you, and think of
your property in Bengal being--ha, ha, ha!--'
The half-expressed idea seemed no less ludicrous to Mr Tigg than to his
friend, for he laughed too, heartily.
'--Being,' resumed David, 'being amenable--your property in Bengal being
amenable--to all claims upon the company; when I look at you and think
of that, you might tickle me into fits by waving the feather of a pen at
me.
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