abstract：`Come!'rejoinedStryver,laughingboastfully,`thoughIdon'tpreferanyclaimtobeingthesoulofRomance(forIhop

`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.'

`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.

`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.'