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"Come!" rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, "though I don't

prefer any claim to being the soul of Romance (for I hope I know

better), still I am a tenderer sort of fellow than you."

"You are a luckier, if you mean that."

"I don't mean that. I mean I am a man of more--more--"

"Say gallantry, while you are about it," suggested Carton.

"Well! I'll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a man," said

Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as he made the punch,

"who cares more to be agreeable, who takes more pains to be

agreeable, who knows better how to be agreeable, in a woman's

society, than you do."

"Go on," said Sydney Carton.