s. Any you can scrape together, bring me. Bring it to me,
Mr Nadgett.'

Nadgett put on his spectacles, and read the name attentively; then
looked at the chairman over his glasses, and bowed; then took them off,
and put them in their case; and then put the case in his pocket. When he
had done so, he looked, without his spectacles, at the paper as it lay
before him, and at the same time produced his pocket-book from somewhere
about the middle of his spine. Large as it was, it was very full of
documents, but he found a place for this one; and having clasped it
carefully, passed it by a kind of solemn legerdemain into the same
region as before.

He withdrew with another bow and without a word; opening the door
no wider than was sufficient for his passage out; and shutting it as
carefully as before. The chairman of the board employed the rest of the
morning in affixing his sign-manual of gracious acceptance to various
new proposals of annuity-purchase and assurance. The Company was looking
up, for they flowed in gayly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

MR MONTAGUE AT HOME. AND MR JONAS CHUZZLEWIT AT HOME

There were many powerful reasons for Jonas Chuzzlewit being strongly
prepossessed in favour of the scheme which its great originator had so
boldly laid open to him; but three among them stood prominently forward.
Firstly, there was money to be made by it. Secondly, the money had the
peculiar charm of being sagaciously obtained at other people's cost.
Thirdly, it involved much outward show of homage and distinction: a
board being an awful institution in its own sphere, and a director a
mighty man. 'To make a swingeing profit, have a lot of chaps to order
about, and get into regular good society by one and the same means, and
them so easy to one's hand, ain't such a bad look-out,' thought
Jonas. The latter considerations were only second to his avarice; for,
conscious that there was nothing in his person, conduct, character, or
accomplishments, to command respect, he was greedy of power, and was, in
his heart, as much a tyrant as any laureled conqueror on record.

But he determined to proceed with cunning and caution, and to be very
keen on his observation of the gentility of Mr Montague's private
establishment. For it no more occurred to this shallow knave that
Montague wanted him to be so, or he wouldn't have invited him while his
decision was yet in abeyance, than the possibility of that genius being
able to overreach hi