chestnuts in theturned cylinder

The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as isoften the way with his tribe. It missed its mark, and completelyfailed, as is often the way with his tribe too

"What now? Are you a subject for the mad hospital?" said thewineshop keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with ahandful of mud, picked up for the purpose, and smeared over it. "Whydo you write in the public streets? Is there- tell me thou- is thereno other place to write such words in?

In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (perhapsaccidentally, perhaps not) upon the joker's heart. The joker rapped itwith his own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in afantastic dancing attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked offhis foot into his hand, and held out. A joker of an extremely, notto say wolfishly practical character, he looked, under thosecircumstances.

"Put it on, put it on," said the other. "Call wine, wine; and finishthere." With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon the joker'sdress, such as it was- quite deliberately, as having dirtied thehand on his account; and then recrossed the road and entered thewine-shop.

This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man ofthirty, and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although itwas a bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over hisshoulder. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown armswere bare to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his headthan his own crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark manaltogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them.Good-humoured looking on the whole, but implacable-looking, too;evidently a man of a strong resolution and a set purpose;rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf oneither side, for nothing would turn the man.

Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the counter as hecame in. Madame Defarge was a stout woman of about his own age, with awatchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large handheavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure ofmanner. There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which onemight have predicated that she did not often make mistakes againstherself in any of the reckonings over which she presided. MadameDefarge being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had aquantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though not to theconcealment of her large ear-rings.

Her knitting was before her, butshe had laid it down to pick her teeth with a toothpick. Thus engaged,with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame Defarge saidnothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough.This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly defined eyebrowsover her toothpick by the breadth of a line, suggested to herhusband that he would do well to look round the shop among thecustomers, for any new customer who had dropped in while he steppedover the way.