📝 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 / 68
1It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would, that I had an early opportunity of comparing my guardian's establishment
2with that of his cashier and clerk. My guardian was in his room, washing his hands with his scented soap, when I went
3into the office from Walworth; and he called me to him, and gave me the invitation for myself and friends which Wemmick
4had prepared me to receive. "No ceremony," he stipulated, "and no dinner dress, and say to-morrow." I asked him where we
5should come to (for I had no idea where he lived), and I believe it was in his general objection to make anything like
6an admission, that he replied, "Come here, and I'll take you home with me." I embrace this opportunity of remarking that
7he washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or a dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose,
8which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer's shop. It had an unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the
9door, and he would wash his hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this towel, whenever he came in from a police
10court or dismissed a client from his room. When I and my friends repaired to him at six o'clock next day, he seemed to
11have been engaged on a case of a darker complexion than usual, for we found him with his head butted into this closet,
12not only washing his hands, but laving his face and gargling his throat. And even when he had done all that, and had
13gone all round the jack-towel, he took out his penknife and scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat on.
14There were some people slinking about as usual when we passed out into the street, who were evidently anxious to speak
15with him; but there was something so conclusive in the halo of scented soap which encircled his presence, that they gave
16it up for that day. As we walked along westward, he was recognised ever and again by some face in the crowd of the
17streets, and whenever that happened he talked louder to me; but he never otherwise recognised anybody, or took notice
18that anybody recognised him. He conducted us to Gerrard Street, Soho, to a house on the south side of that street.
19Rather a stately house of its kind, but dolefully in want of painting, and with dirty windows. He took out his key and
20opened the door, and we all went into a stone hall, bare, gloomy, and little used. So, up a dark brown staircase into a
21series of three dark brown rooms on the first floor. There were carved garlands on the panelled walls, and as he stood
22among them giving us welcome, I know what kind of loops I thought they looked like. Dinner was laid in the best of these
23rooms; the second was his dressing-room; the third, his bedroom. He told us that he held the whole house, but rarely
24used more of it than we saw. The table was comfortably laid--no silver in the service, of course--and at the side of his
25chair was a capacious dumb-waiter, with a variety of bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert.
26I noticed throughout, that he kept everything under his own hand, and distributed everything himself. There was a
27bookcase in the room; I saw from the backs of the books, that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal
28biography, trials, acts of Parliament, and such things. The furniture was all very solid and good, like his watch-chain.
29It had an official look, however, and there was nothing merely ornamental to be seen. In a corner was a little table of
30papers with a shaded lamp: so that he seemed to bring the office home with him in that respect too, and to wheel it out
31of an evening and fall to work. As he had scarcely seen my three companions until now,--for he and I had walked
32together,--he stood on the hearth-rug, after ringing the bell, and took a searching look at them. To my surprise, he
33seemed at once to be principally if not solely interested in Drummle. "Pip," said he, putting his large hand on my
34shoulder and moving me to the window, "I don't know one from the other. Who's the Spider?" "The spider?" said I. "The
35blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow." "That's Bentley Drummle," I replied; "the one with the delicate face is Startop." Not
36making the least account of "the one with the delicate face," he returned, "Bentley Drummle is his name, is it? I like
37the look of that fellow." He immediately began to talk to Drummle: not at all deterred by his replying in his heavy
38reticent way, but apparently led on by it to screw discourse out of him. I was looking at the two, when there came
39between me and them the housekeeper, with the first dish for the table. She was a woman of about forty, I supposed,--but
40I may have thought her younger than she was. Rather tall, of a lithe nimble figure, extremely pale, with large faded
41eyes, and a quantity of streaming hair. I cannot say whether any diseased affection of the heart caused her lips to be
42parted as if she were panting, and her face to bear a curious expression of suddenness and flutter; but I know that I
43had been to see Macbeth at the theatre, a night or two before, and that her face looked to me as if it were all
44disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the Witches' caldron. She set the dish on, touched my
45guardian quietly on the arm with a finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We took our seats at the round
46table, and my guardian kept Drummle on one side of him, while Startop sat on the other. It was a noble dish of fish that
47the housekeeper had put on table, and we had a joint of equally choice mutton afterwards, and then an equally choice
48bird. Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all of the best, were given out by our host from his
49dumb-waiter; and when they had made the circuit of the table, he always put them back again. Similarly, he dealt us
50clean plates and knives and forks, for each course, and dropped those just disused into two baskets on the ground by his
51chair. No other attendant than the housekeeper appeared. She set on every dish; and I always saw in her face, a face
52rising out of the caldron. Years afterwards, I made a dreadful likeness of that woman, by causing a face that had no
53other natural resemblance to it than it derived from flowing hair to pass behind a bowl of flaming spirits in a dark
54room. Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by her own striking appearance and by Wemmick's
55preparation, I observed that whenever she was in the room she kept her eyes attentively on my guardian, and that she
56would remove her hands from any dish she put before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his calling her back, and
57wanted him to speak when she was nigh, if he had anything to say. I fancied that I could detect in his manner a
58consciousness of this, and a purpose of always holding her in suspense. Dinner went off gayly, and although my guardian
59seemed to follow rather than originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the weakest part of our dispositions out of us.
60For myself, I found that I was expressing my tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patronise Herbert, and to boast of
61my great prospects, before I quite knew that I had opened my lips. It was so with all of us, but with no one more than
62Drummle: the development of whose inclination to gird in a grudging and suspicious way at the rest, was screwed out of
63him before the fish was taken off. It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, that our conversation turned upon
64our rowing feats, and that Drummle was rallied for coming up behind of a night in that slow amphibious way of his.
65Drummle upon this, informed our host that he much preferred our room to our company, and that as to skill he was more
66than our master, and that as to strength he could scatter us like chaff. By some invisible agency, my guardian wound him
67up to a pitch little short of ferocity about this trifle; and he fell to baring and spanning his arm to show how
68muscular it was, and we all fell to baring and spanning our arms in a ridiculous manner.
🎉 全部完成！共 68 行