Kindly throw your eye over any one of them.
I flatter myself there is no such thing as a blot, or a careless entry
in it, from the first page to the last. Look at this room--is there a
chair out of place? Not if I know it! Look at _me_. Am I dusty? am I
dirty? am I half shaved? Am I, in brief, a speckless pauper, or am I
not? Mind! I take no credit to myself; the nature of the man, my dear
girl--the nature of the man!"
He opened one of the books. Magdalen was no judge of the admirable
correctness with which the accounts inside were all kept; but she could
estimate the neatness of the handwriting, the regularity in the rows of
figures, the mathematical exactness of the ruled lines in red and black
ink, the cleanly absence of blots, stains, or erasures. Although Captain
Wragge's inborn sense of order was in him--as it is in others--a sense
too inveterately mechanical to exercise any elevating moral influence
over his actions, it had produced its legitimate effect on his habits,
and had reduced his rogueries as strictly to method and system as if
they had been the commercial transactions of an honest man.
"In appearance, my system looks complicated?" pursued the captain.
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