Identifier: ourmutualfriend00dick (find matches)
Title: Our mutual friend
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 Dickens, Charles, 1837-1896, ed
Subjects: Inheritance and succession Social classes Poor families Deception
Publisher: New York, London, Macmillan
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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tance attendant on my life, that every effort I make towardsperfect respectability, is impeded by somebody else through nofault of mine ! Not content with doing what I have put beforeyou, you will drag my name into notoriety through dragging mysisters — which you are pretty sure to do, if my suspicions haveany foundation at all — and the worse you prove to be, the harderit will be for me to detach myself from being associated with youin peoples minds. When he had dried his eyes and heaved a sob over his injuries,he began moving towards the door. However, I have made up my mind that I will become respect-able in the scale of society, and that I will not be dragged down byothers. I have done with my sister as well as with you. Sinceshe cares so little for me as to care nothing for undermining myrespectability, she shall go her way and I will go mine. My pros-pects are very good, and I mean to follow them alone. Mr. Head-stone, I dont say what you have got upon your conscience, for I
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BETTER TO BE ABEL THAN CAIN. 684 OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. dont know. Whatever lies upon it, I hope you will see the justiceof keeping wide and clear of me, and will find a consolation incompletely exonerating all but yourself. I hope before many yearsare out, to succeed the master in my present school, and the mis-tress being a single woman, though some years older than I am, Imight even marry her. If it is any comfort to you to know whatplans I may work out by keeping myself strictly respectable in thescale of society, these are the plans at present occurring to me.In conclusion, if you feel a sense of having injured me, and a desireto make some small reparation, I hope you will think how respect-able you might have been yourself, and will contemplate yourblighted existence. Was it strange that the wretched man should take this heavilyto heart? Perhaps he had taken the boy to heart, first, throughsome long laborious years; perhaps through the same years he hadfound his drudgery lightened b

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