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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens


260

CHAPTER IX
THE GAME MADE


WHILE SYDNEY CARTON and the Sheep of the prisons were in
the adjoining dark room, speaking so low that not a sound was
heard, Mr. Lorry looked at Jerry in considerable doubt and
mistrust. That honest tradesman’s manner of receiving the look,
did not inspire confidence; he changed the leg on which he rested,
as often as if he had fifty of those limbs, and were trying them all;
he examined his finger-nails with a very questionable closeness of
attention; and whenever Mr. Lorry’s eye caught his, he was taken
with that peculiar kind of short cough requiring the hollow of a
hand before it, which is seldom, if ever, known to be an infirmity
attendant on perfect openness of character.

“Jerry,” said Mr. Lorry. “Come here.” Mr. Cruncher came forward
sideways, with one of his shoulders in advance of him.

“What have you been, besides a messenger?” After some
cogitation, accompanied with an intent look at his patron, Mr.
Cruncher conceived the luminous idea of replying, “Agricultooral
character.” “My mind misgives me much,” said Mr. Lorry, angrily
shaking a forefinger at him, “that you have used the respectable
and great house of Tellson’s as a blind, and that you have had an
unlawful occupation of an infamous description. If you have, don’t
expect me to befriend you when you get back to England. If you
have, don’t expect me to keep your secret. Tellson’s shall not be
imposed upon.” “I hope, sir,” pleaded the abashed Mr. Cruncher,
“that a gentleman like yourself wot I’ve had the honour of odd
jobbing till I’m grey at it, would think twice about harming of me,
even if it wos so-I don’t say it is, but even if it wos. And which it is
to be took into account that if it wos, it wouldn’t, even then, be all
o’ one side. There’d be two sides to it. There might be medical
doctors at the present hour, a picking up their guineas where a
honest tradesman don’t pick up his fardens-fardens! no, nor yet
his half fardens-half fardens! no, nor yet his quartera banking
away like smoke at Tellson’s, and a cocking their medical eyes at
that tradesman on the sly, a going in and going out to their own
carriages-ah! equally like smoke, if not more so. Well, that ‘ud be
imposing, too, on Tellson’s. For you cannot sarse the goose and not
the gander. And here’s Mrs. Cruncher, or leastways wos in the Old
England times, and would be to-morrow, if cause given, a floppin’
again the business to that degree as is ruinating-stark ruinating!
Whereas them medical doctors’ wives don’t flop-catch ‘em at it!
Or, if they flop, their floppings goes in favour of more patients, and
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