A Tale of Two Cities

Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr. Lorry shook his head;
using that important part of himself as a sort of fairy cloak that
would fit anything.

"All sorts of people who are not in the least degree worthy of the pet,
are always turning up," said Miss Pross.  "When you began it--"

"_I_ began it, Miss Pross?"

"Didn't you?  Who brought her father to life?"

"Oh!  If _that_ was beginning it--" said Mr. Lorry.

"It wasn't ending it, I suppose?  I say, when you began it, it was hard
enough; not that I have any fault to find with Doctor Manette, except
that he is not worthy of such a daughter, which is no imputation on
him, for it was not to be expected that anybody should be, under any
circumstances.  But it really is doubly and 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 service of her eccentricity, one of those
unselfish creatures--found only among women--who 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 mind--we all make such arrangements, more or less--
he 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.

"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 suppose--you go so far as to suppose,
sometimes?"

"Now and then," said Miss Pross.

"Do you suppose," Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing twinkle in his
bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, "that Doctor Manette has any
theory of his own, preserved through all those years, relative to the
cause of his being so oppressed; perhaps, even to the name of his
oppressor?"

"I don't suppose anything about it but what Ladybird tells me."

"And that is--?"

"That she thinks he has."

"Now don't be angry at my asking all these questions; because I am a
mere dull man of business, and you are a woman of business."

"Dull?" Miss Pross inquired, with placidity.

Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry replied, "No, no,
no.  Surely not.  To return to business:--Is it not remarkable that
Doctor Manette, unquestionably innocent of any crime as we are all
well assured he is, should never touch upon that question?  I will not
say with me, though he had business relations with me many years ago,
and we are now intimate; I will say with the fair daughter to whom he
is so devotedly attached, and who is so devotedly attached to him?