A Tale of Two Cities

"And you," returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, "are such a
sensitive and poetical spirit--"

"Come!" rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, "though I don't prefer
any claim to being the soul of Romance (for I hope I know better),
still I am a tenderer sort of fellow than _you_."

"You are a luckier, if you mean that."

"I don't mean that.  I mean I am a man of more--more--"

"Say gallantry, while you are about it," suggested Carton.

"Well!  I'll say gallantry.  My meaning is that I am a man," said
Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as he made the punch,
"who cares more to be agreeable, who takes more pains to be agreeable,
who knows better how to be agreeable, in a woman's society, than you do."

"Go on," said Sydney Carton.

"No; but before I go on," said Stryver, shaking his head in his bullying
way, "I'll have this out with you.  You've been at Doctor Manette's
house as much as I have, or more than I have.  Why, I have been ashamed
of your moroseness there!  Your manners have been of that silent and
sullen and hangdog kind, that, upon my life and soul, I have been
ashamed of you, Sydney!"

"It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice at the bar,
to be ashamed of anything," returned Sydney; "you ought to be much
obliged to me."

"You shall not get off in that way," rejoined Stryver, shouldering the
rejoinder at him; "no, Sydney, it's my duty to tell you--and I tell you
to your face to do you good--that you are a devilish ill-conditioned
fellow in that sort of society.  You are a disagreeable fellow."

Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made, and laughed.

"Look at me!" said Stryver, squaring himself; "I have less need to
make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent in
circumstances.  Why do I do it?"

"I never saw you do it yet," muttered Carton.

"I do it because it's politic; I do it on principle.  And look at me!
I get on."

"You don't get on with your account of your matrimonial intentions,"
answered Carton, with a careless air; "I wish you would keep to that.
As to me--will you never understand that I am incorrigible?"

He asked the question with some appearance of scorn.

"You have no business to be incorrigible," was his friend's answer,
delivered in no very soothing tone.

"I have no business to be, at all, that I know of," said Sydney Carton.
"Who is the lady?"

"Now, don't let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable,
Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious
friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make, "because I know
you don't mean half you say; and if you meant it all, it would be of
no importance.  I make this little preface, because you once mentioned
the young lady to me in slighting terms."

"I did?"

"Certainly; and in these chambers."

Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his complacent friend;
drank his punch and looked at his complacent friend.

"You made mention of the young lady as a golden-haired doll.  The young
lady is Miss Manette.  If you had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or
delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been a
little resentful of your employing such a designation; but you are not.
You want that sense altogether; therefore I am no more annoyed when I
think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man's opinion of
a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures:  or of a piece of music
of mine, who had no ear for music."

Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by bumpers,
looking at his friend.

"Now you know all about it, Syd," said Mr. Stryver.  "I don't care
about fortune:  she is a charming creature, and I have made up my mind
to please myself:  on the whole, I think I can afford to please myself.
She will have in me a man already pretty well off, and a rapidly
rising man, and a man of some distinction:  it is a piece of good fortune
for her, but she is worthy of good fortune.  Are you astonished?"

Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should I be astonished?"

"You approve?"

Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should I not approve?"

"Well!" said his friend Stryver, "you take it more easily than I
fancied you would, and are less mercenary on my behalf than I thought