Search -
The Works of Charles Dickens: Our mutual friend, part I
The Works of Charles Dickens Our mutual friend part I Author:Charles Dickens Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: "This arrives in an extraordinarily opportune manner," says Mortimer then, looking with an altered face round the table: " this is the conclusion of the story of... more » the identical man." " Already married? " one guesses. "Declines to marry? " another guesses. " Codicil among the dust? " another guesses. " Why, no," says Mortimer; " remarkable thing, you are all wrong. The story is completer and rather more exciting than I supposed. Man's drowned !" CHAPTER III. ANOTHER MAN. As the disappearing skirts of the ladies ascended the Veneering staircase, Mortimer following them forth from the dining-room, turned into a library of bran-new books, in bran-new bindings liberally gilded, and requested to seethe messenger who had brought the paper. He was a boy of about fifteen. Mortimer looked at the boy, and the boy looked at the bran-new pilgrims on the wall, going to Canterbury in more gold frame than procession, and more, carving than country. "Whose writing is this?" "Mine, sir." " Who told you to write it? " "My father, Jesse Hexam." " Is it he who found the body? " "Yes, sir." "What is your father? " The boy hesitated, looked reproachfully at the pilgrims as if they had involved him in a little difficulty, then said, folding a plait in the right leg of his trousers, " He gets his living along-shore." "Is it far?" "Is which far?" asked the boy, upon his guard, and again upon the road to Canterbury. "To your father's?" " It's a goodish stretch, sir. I come up in a cab, andthe cab's waiting to be paid. We could go back in it before you paid it, if you liked. I went first to your office, according to the direction of the papers found in the pockets, and there I see nobody but a chap about my age who sent me on here." There was a curio...« less