Lucie should love you, you shall tell me on your marriage
morning. Do you promise?”
“Willingly.”
“Give me your hand. She will be home directly, and it is better
she should not see us together tonight, Go! God bless you!”
It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was an hour
later and darker when Lucie came home; she hurried into the
room alone—for Miss Pross had gone straight upstairs—and was
surprised to find his reading-chair empty.
“My father!” she called to him. “Father dear!”
Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low hammering
sound in the bedroom. Passing lightly across the intermediate
room, she looked in at his door and came running back frightened,
crying to herself, with her blood all chilled, “What shall I do! What
shall I do!”
Her uncertainty lasted but a moment; she hurried back and
tapped at his door, and softly called to him. The noise ceased at
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A Tale of Two Cities
the sound of her voice, and he presently came out to her, and they
walked up and down together for a long time.
She came down from her bed to look at him in his sleep that
night. He slept, heavily, and his tray of shoe-making tools, and his
old unfinished work, were all as usual.
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A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XVII
A COMPANION PICTURE
S ydney,” said Mr. Stryver, on that selfsame night, or
morning, to his jackal; “mix another bowl of punch; I have
something to say to you,” Sydney had been working double
tides that night, and the night before, and the night before that,
and a good many nights in succession, making a grand clearance
among Mr. Stryver’s papers before the setting in of the long
vacation. The clearance was effected at last; the Stryver arrears
were handsomely fetched up; everything was got rid of until
November should come with its fogs atmospheric and fogs legal,
and bring grist to the mill again.
Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much
application. It had taken a deal of extra wet-towelling to pull him
through the night; a correspondingly extra quantity of wine had
preceded the towelling; and he was in a very damaged condition,
as he now pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in
which he had steeped it at intervals for the last six hours.
“Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?” said Stryver the
portly, with his hands in his waistband, glancing round from the
sofa where he lay on his back.
“I am.”
“Now, look here! I am going to tell you something that will
rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you think me not
quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry.”
“Do you?”
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A Tale of Two Cities
“Yes. And not for money. What do you say now?”
“I don’t feel disposed to say much. Who is she?”
“Guess.”
“Do I know her?”
“Guess.”
“I am not going to guess, at five o’clock in the morning, with my
brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess,
you must ask me to dinner.”
“Well then, I’ll tell you,” said Stryver, coming slowly into a
sitting posture. “Sydney, I rather despair of making myself
intelligible to you, because you are such an insensible dog.”
“And you,” returned Sydney, busy concocting"};
