Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the

present and the past, “the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and

down the next; now in spirits and now in despondency!”

“Ah!” returned the other sighing: “Yes! The same Sydney, with

the same luck. Even then, I did exercise for other boys, and

seldom did my own.”

“And why not?”

“God knows. It was my way, I suppose.”

He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out

before him, looking at the fire. “Carton,” said his friend, squaring

himself at him with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the

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furnace in which sustained endeavour was forged, and one

delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney Carton of old

Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, “your way is, and

always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose.

Look at me.”

“Oh, botheration!” returned Sydney, with a lighter and more

good-humoured laugh, “don’t you be moral!”

“How have I done what I have done?” said Stryver; “how do I

do what I do?”

“Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it’s not

worth while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want

to do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always

behind.”

“I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there, was I?”

“I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is you

were,” said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they both

laughed.

“Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since

Shrewsbury,” pursued Carton, “you have fallen into your rank,

and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow-students in

the Student-Quarter of Paris, picking up French, and French law,

and other French crumbs that we didn’t get much good of, you

were always somewhere and I was alwaysnowhere.”

“And whose fault was that?”

“Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were

always driving and riving and shouldering and pressing, to that

restless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and

repose. It’s a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one’s own past,

with the day breaking. Turn me in some other direction before I

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go.”

“Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness,” said Stryver,

holding up his glass. “Are you turned in a pleasant direction?”

Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.

“Pretty witness,” he muttered, looking down into his glass. “I

have had enough of witnesses today and tonight: who’s your pretty

witness?”

“The picturesque doctor’s daughter, Miss Manette.”