VIII.
MR. FLINT IS PERFECTLY ASTONISHED, AND MORTIMER HAS A VISION.
The Light Heart—A Scene—The Sunny Heart—A Dream of Little Bell—A Hint.
Now that Mortimer Walters had destroyed the record of poor Snarle's guilt, he determined to be no longer a subject of Flint's authority. He had watched for months for an opportunity to become possessed of the forged cheque; and it was with a heart as light as a singing bird's that he tripped up the office stairs an hour before his time the next morning.
Tim was sweeping out.
Sleep had left no cobwebs in his young eyes; but when he saw Mortimer throw open the office door, humming a light-hearted air, he rubbed his eyelids with the sleeve of his dusty coat, as if it were a question in his mind whether or not he was dreaming.
"My last day here!" said Mortimer gaily to himself. "Weary, tiresome old books! my soul has grown sick over you for the last time."
He brushed the dust from off the dull-looking ledger, and went to work. "Won't I astonish him?" he thought, looking up; and he laughed so pleasantly that Tim, who was sweeping the rubbish into a dust-pan, suspended operations, and expressed his surprise in a somewhat dubious ejaculation:
"I vum!"
When Mr. Flint came in, he saw the same tall form bending over the accustomed desk that had met his eyes every morning for the last ten years; but he did not see the heart that was leaping with new life. And when, in his usual snarly way, he gave Mortimer orders to make up certain invoices, which would have employed the clerk till midnight, he opened a brief conversation which ended in his utter amazement.