高考英语阅读素材 A TALE OF TWO CITIES-1-4.pdfVIP

A TALE OF TWO CITIES_1_4 CHAPTER IV The Preparation WHEN the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon, the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous traveller upon. By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left to be congratulated; for the two others had been set down at their respective roadside destinations. The mildewy inside of the coach, with its damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity, was rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passenger, shaking himself out of it in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a larger sort of dog. `There will be a packet to Calais, to-morrow, drawer? `Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair. The tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir. Bed, sir? `I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom and a barber. `And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if you please. Show Concord! Gentlemans valise and hot water to Concord. Pull off gentlemans boots in Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.) Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord! The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to passenger by the mail, and passengers by the mail being always heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the room ha the odd interest for the establishment of the Royal George that although but one kind of man was seen to go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of it. Consequently another drawer, and two porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all loitering by accident at various points of the road between the Concord and the coffee-room, when a gentle-man of sixty, f