`Do I know her?'

`SYDNEY,' said Mr. Stryver, on that self-same night, or morning, to his jackal; `mix another bowl of punch; I have something to say to you.'

Sydney had been working double tides that night, and the night before, and the night before that, and a good many nights in succession, making a grand clearance among Mr. Stryver's papers before the setting in of the long vacation. The clearance was effected at last; the Stryver arrears were handsomely fetched up; everything was got rid of until November should come with its fogs atmospheric and fogs legal, and bring grist to the mill again.

Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much application. It had taken a deal of extra wet-towelling to pull him through the night; a correspondingly extra quantity of wine had preceded the towelling; and he was in a very damaged condition, as he now pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had steeped it at intervals for the last six hours.

`Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?' said Stryver the portly, with his hands in his waistband, glancing round from the sofa where he lay on his back,

`I am.'

`Now, look here! I am going to tell you something that will rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you think me not quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry.

`Do you?'

`Yes. And not for money. What do you say now?'

`I don't feel disposed to say much. Who is she?'

`Guess.'

`Do I know her?'

`Guess.'

`I am not going to guess, at five o'clock in the morning, with my brains frying and sputtering in my, head. If you want me to guess, you must ask me to dinner.

`Well then, I'll tell you,' said Stryver, coming slowly into a sitting posture. `Sydney, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to you, because you are such an insensible dog.'

`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 Dr. 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 hang-dog 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.