Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
A Tale of Two Cities
eligible?”
“Oh dear yes! Yes. Oh yes, you’re eligible!” said Mr. Lorry. “If
you say eligible, you are eligible.”
“Am I not prosperous?” asked Stryver.
“Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous,” said Mr.
Lorry.
“And advancing?”
“If you come to advancing, you know,” said Mr. Lorry,
delighted to be able to make another admission, “nobody can
doubt that.”
“Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry?” demanded
Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen.
“Well! I—Were you going there now?” asked Mr. Lorry.
“Straight!” said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on the desk.
“Then I think I wouldn’t, if I was you.”
“Why,” said Stryver. “Now, I’ll put you in a corner,” forensically
shaking a forefinger at him. “You are a man of business and bound
to have a reason. State your reason. Why wouldn’t you go?”
“Because,” said Mr. Lorry, “I wouldn’t go on such an object
without having some cause to believe that I should succeed.”
“D—n ME!” cried Stryver, “but this beats everything.”
Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at the
angry Stryver.
“Here’s a man of business—a man of years—a man of
experience—in a bank,” said Stryver; “and having summed up
three leading reasons for complete success, he says there’s no
reason at all! Says it with his head on!” Mr. Stryver remarked
upon the peculiarity as if it would have been infinitely less
remarkable if he had said it with his head off.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
A Tale of Two Cities
“When I speak of success, I speak of success with the young
lady; and when I speak of causes and reasons to make success
probable, I speak of causes and reasons that will tell as such with
the young lady. The young lady, my good sir,” said Mr. Lorry,
mildly tapping the Stryver arm, “the young lady. The young lady
goes before all.”
“Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry,” said Stryver, squaring
his elbows, “that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady
at present in question is a mincing Fool?”
“Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver,” said Mr. Lorry,
reddening, “that I will hear no disrespectful word of that young
lady from any lips; and that if I knew any man—which I hope I do
not—whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so
overbearing, that he could not restrain himself from speaking
disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even Tellson’s
should prevent my giving him a piece of my mind.”
The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr.
Stryver’s blood-vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn
to be angry; Mr. Lorry’s veins, methodical as their courses could
usually be, were in no better state now it was his turn.
“That is what I mean to tell you, sir,” said Mr. Lorry. “Pray let
there be no mistake about it.”
Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little while, and then
stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, which probably gave
him the toothache. He broke the awkward silence by saying:
“This is something new to me. Mr. Lorry. You deliberately
advise me not to go up to Soho and offer myself—myself, Stryver
of the King’s Bench bar?”
“Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver?”
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
f
A Tale of Two Cities
“Yes, I do.”
“Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly.”
“And all I can say of it is,” laughed Stryver with a vexed laugh,
“that this—ha, ha!—beats everything past, present, and to come.”
“Now understand me,” pursued Mr. Lorry. “As a man of
business, I am not justified in saying anything about this matter,
for, as a man of bu"};
