She made no reply to this. She only folded up the formula and placed it carefully beside Mrs. Werner's cheque in the pretty purse her friend had given her.
CHAPTER IV.
MORTOMLEY'S BLUE.
The new year brought with it much glorification of spirit to the manager of St. Vedast Wharf and the two men whose fortunes were, to a certain extent, associated with the temporary success of the General Chemical Company Limited.
Never before had so satisfactory a balance-sheet been presented to the shareholders of that company,—never before had a good dividend been so confidently recommended,—never had accountants audited accounts so entirely satisfactory, or checked securities so stamped with the impress of solvency,—never had the thanks of every one been so due to any body of directors as on that special occasion, and never had any manager, secretary, and the other officers of any company been so efficient, so self-denying, so hard-working, and so utterly conscientious as the manager and other officers connected with that concern which was travelling as fast to ruin as it knew how.
The way in which these things are managed might puzzle even a man experienced in City ways to explain, since each company has its own modes of cooking its accounts and hoodwinking the public. But these things are done,—they were yesterday, they have been to-day, they will be to-morrow; and if you live so long, my dear reader, you will hear more about yesterday's doings, and to-day's, and to-morrow's when, a few years hence, you peruse the case of Blank v. Blank, or Blank v. the Blank Company Limited, or any other improving record of the same sort.
The worst of the whole matter is that our clever financiers always keep a little in advance of the law, as our clever thieves always keep a little in advance of our safemakers. The gentlemen of a hundred schemes complacently fleece their victims, and Parliament—wise after—says in solemn convocation that the British sheep shall never be shorn in such and such a way again with impunity.
Nevertheless, though not in the same way, the sheep is shorn daily, and the shearer escapes scot-free with the wool. Always lagging behind the wit of the culprit comes the wit of the law. It is only the poor wretches who have no brains to enable them to take a higher flight than picking pockets that really suffer.
"You are a hardened ruffian," says the judge, looking through his spectacles at the pickpocket who has been convicted about a dozen times previously, "and I mean to send you for five years where you can pick no more pockets," which indeed the hardened ruffian—stripping off all the false clothing philanthropists love to deck him with—deserves most thoroughly. But, then, what about the hardened ruffians who are never convicted, who float their bubble companies and rob the widow and the orphan as coolly as Bill Sykes, only with smiling faces and well-clothed persons?