Slowly, on Mr. Jasper's part.
Crack. Sharply on the part of Edwin Drood.
Silence on both sides.
'Have you lost your tongue, Jack?'
'Have you found yours, Ned?'
'No, but really;--isn't it, you know, after all--'
Mr. Jasper lifts his dark eyebrows inquiringly.
'Isn't it unsatisfactory to be cut off from choice in such a
matter? There, Jack! I tell you! If I could choose, I would
choose Pussy from all the pretty girls in the world.'
'But you have not got to choose.'
'That's what I complain of. My dead and gone father and Pussy's
dead and gone father must needs marry us together by anticipation.
Why the--Devil, I was going to say, if it had been respectful to
their memory--couldn't they leave us alone?'
'Tut, tut, dear boy,' Mr. Jasper remonstrates, in a tone of gentle
deprecation.
'Tut, tut? Yes, Jack, it's all very well for YOU. YOU can take it
easily. YOUR life is not laid down to scale, and lined and dotted
out for you, like a surveyor's plan. YOU have no uncomfortable
suspicion that you are forced upon anybody, nor has anybody an
uncomfortable suspicion that she is forced upon you, or that you
are forced upon her. YOU can choose for yourself. Life, for YOU,
is a plum with the natural bloom on; it hasn't been over-carefully
wiped off for YOU--'
'Don't stop, dear fellow. Go on.'
'Can I anyhow have hurt your feelings, Jack?'
'How can you have hurt my feelings?'
'Good Heaven, Jack, you look frightfully ill! There's a strange
film come over your eyes.
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