Yes! one of these days (when I am dead
and gone), as ideas enlarge and enlightenment progresses, the abstract
merits of the profession now called swindling will be recognized.
When that day comes, don't drag me out of my grave and give me a public
funeral; don't take advantage of my having no voice to raise in my own
defense, and insult me by a national statue. No! do me justice on my
tombstone; dash me off, in one masterly sentence, on my epitaph. Here
lies Wragge, embalmed in the tardy recognition of his species: he
plowed, sowed, and reaped his fellow-creatures; and enlightened
posterity congratulates him on the uniform excellence of his crops."
He stopped; not from want of confidence, not from want of words--purely
from want of breath. "I put it frankly, with a dash of humor," he said,
pleasantly. "I don't shock you--do I?" Weary and heart-sick as she
was--suspicious of others, doubtful of herself--the extravagant
impudence of Captain Wragge's defense of swindling touched Magdalen's
natural sense of humor, and forced a smile to her lips. "Is the
Yorkshire crop a particularly rich one just at present?" she inquired,
meeting him, in her neatly feminine way, with his own weapons.
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