quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry.”

“Do you?”

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

“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 the punch, “are

such a sensitive and poetical spirit.”

“Come!” rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, “though I don’t

prefer any claim to being the soul of Romance (for I hope I know

better), still I am a tenderer sort of fellow than you.”

“You are a luckier, if you mean that.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean I am a man of moremore”

“Say gallantry, while you are about it,” suggested Carton.

“Well! I’ll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a man,” said

Stryver, inflating himself at his friend, as he made the punch,

“who cares more to be agreeable, who takes more pains to be

agreeable, who knows better how to be agreeable, in a woman’s

society, than you do.”

“Go on,” said Sydney Carton.

“No; but before I go on,” said Stryver, shaking his head in his

bullying way, “I’ll have this out with you. You’ve been at Dr.

Manette’s house as much as I have, or more than I have. Why, I

have been ashamed of your moroseness there! Your manners have

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been of that silent and sullen and hang-dog kind, that, upon my

life and soul, I have been ashamed of you, Sydney!”

“It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice at the

bar, to be ashamed of anything,” returned Sydney; “you ought to

be much obliged to me.”

“You shall not get off in that way,” rejoined Stryver,

shouldering the rejoinder at him; “no Sydney, it’s my duty to tell

youand I tell you to your face to do you goodthat you are a

devilish ill-conditioned fellow in that sort of society. You are a

disagreeable fellow.”

Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made, and

laughed.

“Look at me!” said Stryver, squaring himself; “I have less need

to make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent

in circumstances. Why do I do it?”

“I never saw you do it yet,” muttered Carton.

“I do it because it’s politic; I do it on principle. And look at me! I