"Dear me, how time goes on! The morning is going on, too, and still Mr.
Mills isn't here."
He took a quill pen and drew a half sheet of paper toward him, poised his pen a moment and then wrote quickly.
"What a pity I can't sign for him," he said, passing his paper over to the clerk. "Look at that; now even you, Timmins, though you have seen Mr. Mills's handwriting ten thousand times, would be ready to swear that the signature was his, would you not?"
Timmins looked scrutinisingly at it.
"Well, I'm sure, sir! What a forger you would have made!" he said admiringly. "I would have sworn that was Mr. Mills's own hand of write. It's wonderful, sir."
Mr. Taynton sighed, and took the paper again.
"Yes, it is like, isn't it?" he said, "and it's so easy to do. Luckily forgers don't know the way to forge properly."
"And what might that be, sir?" asked Timmins.
"Why, to throw yourself mentally into the nature of the man whose handwriting you wish to forge. Of course one has to know the handwriting thoroughly well, but if one does that one just has to visualise it, and then, as I said, project oneself into the other, not laboriously copy the handwriting. Let's try another. Ah, who is that letter from? Mrs. Assheton isn't it. Let me look at the signature just once again."
Mr. Taynton closed his eyes a moment after looking at it. Then he took his quill, and wrote quickly.