"What on earth could anybody want of a 'Ruined Cigar Girl,' or a 'Young Mother?'" and Mortimer laughed outright.
The wand of Prospero is neither more cunning nor more powerful than the pen of a well bred author. It creates something out of nothing, (more frequently nothing out of something), changes time, place, and human nature; it lifts up the blue roofing of ocean, and gives you a glimpse of fish-life; and deeper still, shows you the coral forests of the Naiads, and their aquatic palaces. It draws back the curtain of cloud-land, and feeds your fancy with forms that never have been, and never will be; summons spirits from the air, and gives melodious voices to all vernal things.
Pleasant magician that waves this wand! what curious people are walking in the chambers of your brain! What dreams are yours, and what cruel cuts this real world sometimes gives you! You have no right to be here, poor devil! You are somewhat misplanted; you belong to some sphere between earth and heaven, and not very near either. That such a place is provided for you I am certain. There it is that all your books will run through countless editions; there it is you can afford to hire some one to write your autograph for besieging admirers, and feed, as you should,
"On the roses, and lay in the lilies of life."
But I was speaking of pen-magic. It is not my present mood to do anything fantastical in that way. I only wish to give you a sight of Mr. Flint, as he appeared one afternoon some months after Mortimer had left his office. He was standing in that inner-room of his counting-house to which I have introduced the reader. I change my mind—he was not standing. He had just thrown himself into a chair, in which he did not seem at all easy.
I take peculiar delight in placing Mr. Flint in uncomfortable positions.
He was surprised, alarmed, and angry. He missed the forged check and the morocco case which he had watched so many years. That they had been purloined, he could not doubt, and his keen thought fell on Mortimer. The loss of the check troubled him; he liked to look at it occasionally, for Snarle's sake; but the necklace—that gave him strange alarm.
"Snake!" he hissed, "you have crawled into my affairs, and I'll tread on you—tread on you and kill you! You stole the check to save Snarle's name; and the necklace—why did you steal that? Was it valuable? Yes, that is it. I'll grind you in the dust. I'll put you in a prison, and let your brainless father look at you through the bars!"
This humane idea caused Mr. Flint to rub his dry hands, and chuckle violently.
"But"—here Mr. Flint's countenance fell. "If I do this, won't Walters ruin me with that unfortunate letter? O, I was a fool to write it; yet he would have murdered me if I had not."