“Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit should prosper, if

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 alonefor Miss Pross had gone straight upstairsand 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

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

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.

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

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