Mr. Lorry bustled into the chair, and was carried off to Tellson’s.

Carton, who smelt of port wine, and did not appear to be quite

sober, laughed then, and turned to Darnay:

“This is a strange chance that throws you and me together. This

must be a strange night to you, standing alone here with your

counterpart on these street stones?”

“I hardly seem yet,” returned Charles Darnay, “to belong to this

world again.”

“I don’t wonder at it; it’s not so long since you were pretty far

advanced on your way to another. You speak faintly.”

“I begin to think I am faint.”

“Then why the devil don’t you dine? I dined, myself, while

those numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong

tothis, or some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to

dine well at.”

Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgatehill

to Fleet Street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern. Here,

they were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was

soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good

wine: while Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with his

separate bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolent

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manner upon him.

“Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial scheme

again, Mr. Darnay?”

“I am frightfully confused regarding time and place; but I am so

far mended as to feel that.”

“It must be an immense satisfaction!”

He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again: which was a

large one.

“As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong to

it. It has no good in it for meexcept wine like thisnor I for it.

So we are not much alike in that particular. Indeed, I begin to

think we are not much alike in any particular, you and I.”

Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his being there

with this Double of coarse deportment, to be like a dream, Charles

Darnay was at a loss how to answer; finally, answered not at all.

“Now your dinner is done,” Carton presently said, “why don’t

you call a health, Mr. Darnay; why don’t you give your toast?”

“What health? What toast?”

“Why, it’s on the tip of your tongue. It ought to be, it must be,

I’ll swear it’s there.”

“Miss Manette, then!”

“Miss Manette, then!”

Looking his companion full in the face while he drank the toast,

Carton flung his glass over his shoulder against the wall, where it

shivered to pieces; then, rang the bell, and ordered in another.

“That’s a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the dark, Mr.

Darnay!” he said, filling his new goblet.

A slight frown and a laconic, “Yes,” were the answer.