The Freemason's Daughter: A Novel — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE FREEMASONS DAUGHTER. vf themselves, were like those moral felonies which human justice cannot reach, but which, sooner or later, the Source of all justice seldom fails to punish. The person of Richard Lawrence, the junior clerk, we have already described. He had been received into the firm on the sudden death of his father, for many years fellow-clerk with Gridley, long before Small’s connection with the house. Indeed, it was chiefly through the influence of the former that the youth had been employed. Not a sound was to be heard in the counting-house except the scratching of the pens of Gridley and the ,three junior Smalls, as they made out the different invoices, or copied the correspondence of the day. The tail of the firm, as Henry Beacham used to desig- nate Small, was standing with his back to a cheerful fire, contemplating, with a parent’s satisfaction, his industrious boys, or perhaps mentally congratulating himself upon the conclusion of a more than usually delicate affair, when the door was slowly opened, and Richard Lawrence, wet to the skin, and shivering with cold, made his appearance. A satirical smile passed over the features of the junior Smalls as the poor fellow entered the office. “You have been a long time absent!” said his superior, sharply. *‘ T had to wait,’ observed the young man, mildly, “for Mitchell’s securities. Brown’s bills are dishonoured, and there is no advice from Mackinlay, of New York.” COniiclooecl SS (SO