‘Why then, I tell you what, brother,’ Dennis began. ‘You must look up your friends—’ ‘My friends!’ cried… — Charles Dickens
‘Why then, I tell you what, brother,’ Dennis began. ‘You must look up your friends—’ ‘My friends!’ cried Hugh, starting up and resting on his hands. ‘Where are my friends?’ ‘Your relations then,’ said Dennis. ‘Ha ha ha!’ laughed Hugh, waving one arm above his head. ‘He talks of friends to me—talks of relations to a man whose mother died the death in store for her son, and left him, a hungry brat, without a face he knew in all the world! He talks of this to me!’ ‘Brother,’ cried the hangman, whose features underwent a sudden change, ‘you don’t mean to say—’ ‘I mean to say,’ Hugh interposed, ‘that they hung her up at Tyburn. What was good enough for her, is good enough for me. Let them do the like by me as soon as they please—the sooner the better. Say no more to me. I’m going to sleep.’ ‘But I want to speak to you; I want to hear more about that,’ said Dennis, changing color.
Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world brother.
"I’m of as gen-teel a calling, brother, as any man in England—as light a business as any gentleman could desire." "Was you ‘prenticed to it?" asked Mr Tappertit. "No. Natural genius," said Mr Dennis. "No ‘prenticing. It come by natur’. Muster Gashford knows my calling. Look at that hand of mine—many and many a job that hand has done, with a neatness and dexterity, never known afore. When I look at that hand," said Mr Dennis, shaking it in the air, "and remember the helegant bits of work it has turned off, I feel quite molloncholy to think it should ever grow old and feeble. But sich is life!"
‘See the hangman when it comes home to him!’ cried Hugh again, as they bore him away—‘Ha ha ha! Courage, bold Barnaby, what care we? Your hand! They do well to put us out of the world, for if we got loose a second time, we wouldn’t let them off so easy, eh? Another shake! A man can die but once. If you wake in the night, sing that out lustily, and fall asleep again. Ha ha ha!’
