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


36

crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or
thrice upon the door-evidently with no other object than to make a
noise there.

With the same intention, he drew the key across it, three or four
times, before he put it clumsily into the lock, and turned it as
heavily as he could.

The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked
into the room and said something. A faint voice answered
something. Little more than a single syllable could have been
spoken on either side.

He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter. Mr.
Lorry got his arm securely round the daughter’s waist, and held
her; for he felt that she was sinking.

“A-a-a-business, business!” he urged, with a moisture that was
not of business shining on his cheek. “Come in, come in!” “I am
afraid of it,” she answered, shuddering.

“Of it? What?”
“I mean of him. Of my father.” Rendered in a manner desperate,
by her state and by the beckoning of their conductor, he drew over
his neck the arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little,
and hurried her into the room. He sat her down just within the
door, and held her, clinging to him.

Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside,
took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he did,
methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of
noise as he could make. Finally, he walked across the room with a
measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there, and
faced round.

The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was
dim and dark: for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a
door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of
stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two
pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the
cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was
opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was
admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming
in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed
in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such
obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for,
with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window
where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-
haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy,
making shoes.
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