the wine-shop.

“I forgot them in the surprise of your visit,” explained Monsieur

Defarge. “Leave us, good boys; we have business here.”

The three glided by, and went silently down.

There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and the

keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were

left alone, Mr. Lorry asked him in a whisper with a little anger:

“Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette?”

“I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen few.”

“Is that well?”

“I think it is well.”

“Who are the few? How do you choose them?”

“I choose them as real men, of my nameJacques is my

nameto whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough; you are

English; that is another thing. Stay there, if you please, a little

moment.”

With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and

looked in through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head

again, he struck twice or thrice upon the doorevidently with no

other object than to make a noise there. With the same intention,

he drew the key across it, three or four times, before he put it

clumsily into the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could.

The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked

into the room and said something. A faint voice answered

something. Little more than a single syllable could have been

spoken on either side.

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He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter.

Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the daughter’s waist, and

held her; for he felt that she was sinking.

“Aaabusiness, business!” he urged with a moisture that

was not of business shining on his cheek. “Come in, come in!”

“I am afraid of it,” she answered, shuddering.

“Of it? What?”

“I mean of him. Of my father.”

Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by the

beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that

shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into

the room. He set her down just within the door, and held her,

clinging to him.

Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the

inside, took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he

did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment

of noise as he could make. Finally, he walked across the room with

a measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there and

faced round.

The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like,

was dim and dark; for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a

door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of

stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two