📝 您未登录，登录后完成练习可保存成绩、查看最佳记录。
总字符
0
正确字符
0
错误字符
0
错误率
0.00%
耗时(秒)
0
速度 WPM
0
0 / 64
1A Companion Picture "Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, on that self-same night, or morning, to his jackal; "mix another bowl of
2punch; I have something to say to you." Sydney had been working double tides that night, and the night before, and the
3night before that, and a good many nights in succession, making a grand clearance among Mr. Stryver's papers before the
4setting in of the long vacation. The clearance was effected at last; the Stryver arrears were handsomely fetched up;
5everything was got rid of until November should come with its fogs atmospheric, and fogs legal, and bring grist to the
6mill again. Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much application. It had taken a deal of extra
7wet-towelling to pull him through the night; a correspondingly extra quantity of wine had preceded the towelling; and he
8was in a very damaged condition, as he now pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had steeped it
9at intervals for the last six hours. "Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?" said Stryver the portly, with his hands
10in his waistband, glancing round from the sofa where he lay on his back. "I am." "Now, look here! I am going to tell you
11something that will rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you think me not quite as shrewd as you usually do
12think me. I intend to marry." "Do you?" "Yes. And not for money. What do you say now?" "I don't feel disposed to say
13much. Who is she?" "Guess." "Do I know her?" "Guess." "I am not going to guess, at five o'clock in the morning, with my
14brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess, you must ask me to dinner." "Well then, I'll tell
15you," said Stryver, coming slowly into a sitting posture. "Sydney, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to
16you, because you are such an insensible dog." "And you," returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, "are such a
17sensitive and poetical spirit--" "Come!" rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, "though I don't prefer any claim to
18being the soul of Romance (for I hope I know better), still I am a tenderer sort of fellow than you." "You are a
19luckier, if you mean that." "I don't mean that. I mean I am a man of more--more--" "Say gallantry, while you are about
20it," suggested Carton. "Well! I'll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a man," said Stryver, inflating himself at his
21friend as he made the punch, "who cares more to be agreeable, who takes more pains to be agreeable, who knows better how
22to be agreeable, in a woman's society, than you do." "Go on," said Sydney Carton. "No; but before I go on," said
23Stryver, shaking his head in his bullying way, "I'll have this out with you. You've been at Doctor Manette's house as
24much as I have, or more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of your moroseness there! Your manners have been of that
25silent and sullen and hangdog kind, that, upon my life and soul, I have been ashamed of you, Sydney!" "It should be very
26beneficial to a man in your practice at the bar, to be ashamed of anything," returned Sydney; "you ought to be much
27obliged to me." "You shall not get off in that way," rejoined Stryver, shouldering the rejoinder at him; "no, Sydney,
28it'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
29that sort of society. You are a disagreeable fellow." Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made, and laughed. "Look
30at me!" said Stryver, squaring himself; "I have less need to make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent
31in 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
32on principle. And look at me! I get on." "You don't get on with your account of your matrimonial intentions," answered
33Carton, with a careless air; "I wish you would keep to that. As to me--will you never understand that I am
34incorrigible?" He asked the question with some appearance of scorn. "You have no business to be incorrigible," was his
35friend's answer, delivered in no very soothing tone. "I have no business to be, at all, that I know of," said Sydney
36Carton. "Who is the lady?" "Now, don't let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable, Sydney," said Mr.
37Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make, "because I know you don't
38mean half you say; and if you meant it all, it would be of no importance. I make this little preface, because you once
39mentioned the young lady to me in slighting terms." "I did?" "Certainly; and in these chambers." Sydney Carton looked at
40his punch and looked at his complacent friend; drank his punch and looked at his complacent friend. "You made mention of
41the young lady as a golden-haired doll. The young lady is Miss Manette. If you had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or
42delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been a little resentful of your employing such a
43designation; but you are not. You want that sense altogether; therefore I am no more annoyed when I think of the
44expression, 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
45of music of mine, who had no ear for music." Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by bumpers, looking
46at his friend. "Now you know all about it, Syd," said Mr. Stryver. "I don't care about fortune: she is a charming
47creature, and I have made up my mind to please myself: on the whole, I think I can afford to please myself. She will
48have 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
49fortune for her, but she is worthy of good fortune. Are you astonished?" Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined,
50"Why should I be astonished?" "You approve?" Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, "Why should I not approve?"
51"Well!" said his friend Stryver, "you take it more easily than I fancied you would, and are less mercenary on my behalf
52than I thought you would be; though, to be sure, you know well enough by this time that your ancient chum is a man of a
53pretty strong will. Yes, Sydney, I have had enough of this style of life, with no other as a change from it; I feel that
54it is a pleasant thing for a man to have a home when he feels inclined to go to it (when he doesn't, he can stay away),
55and I feel that Miss Manette will tell well in any station, and will always do me credit. So I have made up my mind. And
56now, Sydney, old boy, I want to say a word to you about your prospects. You are in a bad way, you know; you really are
57in a bad way. You don't know the value of money, you live hard, you'll knock up one of these days, and be ill and poor;
58you really ought to think about a nurse." The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made him look twice as big as
59he was, and four times as offensive. "Now, let me recommend you," pursued Stryver, "to look it in the face. I have
60looked it in the face, in my different way; look it in the face, you, in your different way. Marry. Provide somebody to
61take care of you. Never mind your having no enjoyment of women's society, nor understanding of it, nor tact for it. Find
62out somebody. Find out some respectable woman with a little property--somebody in the landlady way, or lodging-letting
63way--and marry her, against a rainy day. That's the kind of thing for you. Now think of it, Sydney." "I'll think of it,"
64said Sydney.
🎉 全部完成！共 64 行