`Oh, botheration!' returned Sydney, with a lighter and more good-humoured laugh, `don't *you be moral!'

`How have I done what I have done?' said Stryver; `how do I do what I do?'

`Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it's not worth your while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want to do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind.'

`I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there, was I?'

`I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is you were,' said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed.

`Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury,' pursued Carton, `you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow students in the Student-Quarter of Paris, picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that we didn't get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was always--nowhere.'

`Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were always driving and riving and shouldering and pressing, to that restless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It's a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one's Own past, with the day breaking. Turn me in some other direction before I go.'

`Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness,' said Stryver, holding up his glass. `Are you turned in a pleasant direction?'