trebly hard to have crowds and multitudes of people turning up

after him (I could have forgiven him), to take Ladybird’s affections

away from me.”

Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he also knew

her by this time to be, beneath the surface of her eccentricity, one

of those unselfish creaturesfound only among womenwho will,

for pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to

youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to

accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain,

to bright hopes that never shone upon their own sombre lives. He

knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better

than the faithful service of the heart; so rendered and so free from

any mercenary taint, he had such an exalted respect for it, that in

the retributive arrangements made by his own mindwe all make

such arrangements, more or lesshe stationed Miss Pross much

nearer to the lower Angels than many ladies immeasurably better

got up both by Nature and Art, who had balances at Tellson’s.

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“There never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of

Ladybird,” said Miss Pross; “and that was my brother Solomon, if

he hadn’t made a mistake in life.”

Here again: Mr. Lorry’s inquiries into Miss Pross’s personal

history had established the fact that her brother Solomon was a

heartless scoundrel who had stripped her of everything she

possessed, as a stake to speculate with, and had abandoned her in

her poverty for evermore, with no touch of compunction. Miss

Pross’s fidelity of belief in Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for

this slight mistake) was quite a serious matter with Mr. Lorry, and

had its weight in his good opinion of her.

“As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both people

of business,” he said, when they had got back to the drawing-room

and had sat down there in friendly relations, “let me ask you

does the Doctor, in talking with Lucie, never refer to the

shoemaking time, yet?”

“Never.”

“And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him?”

“Ah!” returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. “But I don’t say

he don’t refer to it within himself.”

“Do you believe that he thinks of it much?”

“I do,” said Miss Pross.

“Do you imagine” Mr. Lorry had begun, when Miss Pross

took him up short with:

“Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all.”

“I stand corrected; do you supposeyou go so far as to

suppose, sometimes?”

“Now and then,” said Miss Pross.

“Do you suppose,” Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing twinkle

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in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, “that Doctor Manette

has any theory of his own, preserved through all those years,