except one, and that was Morgiana Crump's.

With his genius and his position in the profession, how comes it,
then, that Mr. Eglantine was not a man of fortune, as many a less
clever has been? If the truth must be told, he loved pleasure, and
was in the hands of the Jews. He had been in business twenty years:
he had borrowed a thousand pounds to purchase his stock and shop;
and he calculated that he had paid upwards of twenty thousand pounds
for the use of the one thousand, which was still as much due as on
the first day when he entered business. He could show that he had
received a thousand dozen of champagne from the disinterested
money-dealers with whom he usually negotiated his paper. He had
pictures all over his "studios," which had been purchased in the
same bargains. If he sold his goods at an enormous price, he paid
for them at a rate almost equally exorbitant. There was not an
article in his shop but came to him through his Israelite providers;
and in the very front shop itself sat a gentleman who was the
nominee of one of them, and who was called Mr. Mossrose. He was
there to superintend the cash account, and to see that certain
instalments were paid to his principals, according to certain
agreements entered into between Mr. Eglantine and them.

Having that sort of opinion of Mr. Mossrose which Damocles may have
had of the sword which hung over his head, of course Mr. Eglantine
hated his foreman profoundly. "HE an artist," would the former
gentleman exclaim; "why, he's only a disguised bailiff! Mossrose
indeed! The chap's name's Amos, and he sold oranges before he came
here." Mr. Mossrose, on his side, utterly despised Mr. Eglantine,
and looked forward to the day when he would become the proprietor of
the shop, and take Eglantine for a foreman; and then it would HIS