Page:Dickens - Our Mutual Friend, ed. Lang, 1897, vol.1.djvu/59

 and smeared out with my finger most, father was best pleased, as he stood looking over me."

The girl put aside her work, and drawing her seat close to his seat by the fire, laid her arm gently on his shoulder.

" You'll make the most of your time, Charley; won't you? "

" Won't I? Come! I like that. Don't I?"

" Yes, Charley, yes. You work hard at your learning, I know. And I work a little, Charley, and plan and contrive a little (wake out of my sleep contriving sometimes), how to get together a shilling now, and a shilling then, that shall make father believe you are beginning to earn a stray living along-shore."

" You are father's favourite, and can make him believe anything."

" I wish I could, Charley! For if I could make him believe that learning was a good thing, and that we might lead better lives, I should be a'most content to die."

" Don't talk stuff about dying, Liz."

She placed her hands in one another on his shoulder, and laying her rich brown cheek against them as she looked down at the fire, went on thoughtfully:

" Of an evening, Charley, when you are at the school, and father's—— "

" At the Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters," the boy struck in, with a backward nod of his head towards the public-house.

" Yes. Then as I sit a-looking at the fire, I seem to see in the burning coal—like where that glow is now—— "

" That's gas, that is," said the boy, " coming out of a bit of a forest that's been under the mud that was under the water in the days of Noah's Ark. Look here! When I take the poker—so—and give it a dig—— "

" Don't disturb it, Charley, or it'll be all in a blaze. It's that dull glow near it, coming and going, that I mean. When I look at it of an evening, it comes like pictures to me, Charley."