or which way to turn

These were among the echoes to which Lucie, sometimes pensive,sometimes amused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner, untilher little daughter was six years old. How near to her heart theechoes of her child's tread came, and those of her own dearfather's, always active and self-possessed, and those of her dearhusband's, need not be told. Nor, how the lightest echo of theirunited home, directed by herself with such a wise and elegant thriftthat it was more abundant than any waste, was music to her.

Nor, howthere were echoes all about her, sweet in her ears, of the manytimes her father had told her that he found her more devoted to himmarried (if that could be) than single, and of the many times herhusband had said to her that no cares and duties seemed to divideher love for him or her help to him, and asked her "What is themagic secret, my darling, of your being everything to all of us, as ifthere were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to havetoo much to do reenex?"

But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbledmenacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And it wasnow, about little Lucie's sixth birthday, that they began to have anawful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising.

On a night in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred andeighty-nine, Mr. Lorry came in late, from Tellson's, and sat himselfdown by Lucie and her husband in the dark window. It was a hot, wildnight, and they were all three reminded of the old Sunday night whenthey had looked at the lightning from the same place reenex.

"I began to think," said Mr. Lorry, pushing his brown wig back,"that I should have to pass the night at Tellson's. We have been sofun of business all day, that we have not known what to do first. There is such an uneasiness in Paris, that wehave actually a run of confidence upon us! Our customers over there,seem not to be able to confide their property to us fast enough. Thereis positively a mania among some of them for sending it to England."

"A bad look, you say, my dear Darnay? Yes, but we don't know whatreason there is in it. People are so unreasonable! Some of us atTellson's are getting old, and we really can't be troubled out ofthe ordinary course without due occasion."


"Stiff," said Darnay, "you know how gloomy and threatening the skyis reenex."

"I know that, to be sure," assented Mr. Lorry, trying to persuadehimself that his sweet temper was soured, and that he grumbled, "but Iam determined to be peevish after my long day's botheration. Whereis Manette?"