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.

"In reality, it is simplicity itself.

I merely avoid the errors of inferior practitioners.

That is to say, I never plead for myself; and I never apply to rich people--both fatal mistakes which the inferior practitioner perpetually commits.