Page:Dickens - Our Mutual Friend, ed. Lang, 1897, vol.1.djvu/48

 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 of about my age who sent me on here."

There was a curious mixture in the boy, of uncompleted savagery, and uncompleted civilisation. His voice was hoarse and coarse, and his face was coarse, and his stunted figure was coarse; but he was cleaner than other boys of his type; and his writing, though large and round, was good; and he glanced at the backs of the books, with an awakened curiosity that went below the binding. No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.

" Were any means taken, do you know, boy, to ascertain if it was possible to restore life?" Mortimer inquired, as he sought for his hat.

" You wouldn't ask, sir, if you knew his state. Pharaoh's multitude, that were drowned in the Red Sea, ain't more beyond restoring to life. If Lazarus was only half as far gone, that was the greatest of all the miracles."

" Halloa! " cried Mortimer, turning round with his hat upon his head, " you seem to be at home in the Red Sea, my young friend? "

"Read of it with teacher at the school," said the boy.

" And Lazarus? "

" Yes, and him too. But don't you tell my father! We should have no peace in our place, if that got touched upon. It's my sister's contriving."

" You seem to have a good sister."

" She ain't half bad," said the boy; " but if she knows her letters it's the most she does—and them I learned her."

The gloomy Eugene, with his hands in his pockets, had strolled in and assisted at the latter part of the dialogue; when the boy spoke these words slightingly of his sister, he took him roughly enough by the chin and turned up his face to look at it.