Paris, sir. A vast deal of travelling, sir, in
Tellson and Company's House."

"Yes. We are quite a French house, as well
as an English one."

"Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such
travelling yourself, I think, sir?"

"Not of late years. It is fifteen years since
we—since I—came last from France."

"Indeed, sir? That was before my time
here, sir. Before our people's time here, sir.
The George was in other hands at that time, sir."

"I believe so."

"But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a
House like Tellson and Company was flourishing,
a matter of fifty, not to speak of fifteen years
ago?"

"You might treble that, and say a hundred
and fifty, yet not be far from the truth."

"Indeed, sir!"

Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he
stepped backward from the table, the waiter
shifted his napkin from his right arm to his left,
dropped into a comfortable attitude, and stood
surveying the guest while he ate and drank, as
from an observatory or watch-tower. According
to the immemorial usage of waiters in all
ages.

When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he
went out for a stroll on the beach. The little
narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away
from the beach, and ran its head into the
chalk-cliffs, like a marine ostrich. The beach
was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling
wildly about, and the sea did what it liked,
and what it liked was destruction. It thundered
at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and
brought the coast down, madly. The air among
the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour
that one might have supposed sick fish went up to
be dipped in it, as sick people went down to
be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done
in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by
night, and looking seaward: particularly at those
times when the tide made, and was near flood.
Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever,
sometimes unaccountably realised large fortunes,
and it was remarkable that nobody in the
neighbourhood could endure a lamplighter.

As the day declined into the afternoon, and
the air, which had been at intervals clear enough
to allow the French coast to be seen, became
again charged with mist and vapour, Mr. Lorry's
thoughts seemed to cloud too. When it was
dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire,
awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast,
his mind was busily digging, digging,
digging, in the live red coals.

A bottle of good claret after dinner does a
digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise than
as it has a tendency to throw him out of work.
Mr. Lorry had been idle a long time, and had
just poured out his last glassful of wine with as
complete an appearance of satisfaction as is ever
to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh
complexion who has got to the end of a bottle,
when a rattling of wheels came up the narrow
street, and rumbled into the inn-yard.

He set down his glass untouched. "This is
Mam'selle!" said he.

In a very few minutes the waiter came in, to
announce that Miss Manette had arrived from
London, and would be happy to see the gentleman
from Tellson's.

"So soon?"

Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on
the road, and required none then, and was
extremely anxious to see the gentleman from
Tellson's immediately, if it suited his pleasure and
convenience.

The gentleman from Tellson's had nothing
left for it but to empty his glass with an air of
stolid desperation, settle his odd little flaxen wig
at the ears, and follow the waiter to Miss
Manette' s apartment. It was a large, dark
room, furnished in a funereal manner with black
horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables.
These had been oiled and oiled, until the two tall
candles on the table in the middle of the room
were gloomily reflected on every leaf; as if they
were buried, in deep graves of black mahogany,
and no light to speak of could be expected from
them until they were dug out.

The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate
that Mr. Lorry, picking his way over the well-
worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to
be, for the moment, in some adjacent room,
until, having got past the two tall candles, he
saw standing to receive him by the table
between them and the fire, a young lady of not
more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still
holding her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon, in
her hand. As his eyes rested on a short, slight-
pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of
blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look,
and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering
how young and smooth it was), of lifting and
knitting itself into an expression that was not quite
one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely
of a bright fixed attention, though it included
all the four expressions—as his eyes rested on
these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed
before him, of a child whom he had held in his
arms on the passage across that very Channel,
one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and
the sea ran high. The likeness passed away, say,
like a breath along the surface of the gaunt pierglass
behind her, on the frame of which, a hospital
procession of negro cupids, several headless and all
cripples, were offering black baskets of Dead-Sea
fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender—
and he made his formal bow to Miss Manette.

"Pray take a seat, sir." In a very clear and
pleasant young voice: a little foreign in its
accent, but a very little indeed.

"I kiss your hand, miss," said Mr. Lorry,
with the manners of an earlier date, as he made
his formal bow again, and took his seat.

"I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday,
informing me that some new intelligence
—or discovery—— "

"The word is not material, miss; either word
will do."

"—respecting the small property of my poor
father whom I never saw—so long dead——"