Tales from Dickens

He was just wondering if he had not better run away when the boy pushed open a door, drew Oliver inside, up a broken stairway and into a back room.

The next thing she knew, an ugly old woman, with red-rimmed eyes and a mouth that mumbled all the while, grasped her by the wrist and dragged her through the shabby doorway of a...

The whole village soon grew to love her. Many came to visit her and the schoolmaster read to her each day, so that she was content even when she could no longer walk abroad as s...

Besides Tommy Traddles, David liked best the head boy, James Steerforth--the oldest boy in the school, and the only one Creakle did not dare beat or mistreat. Steerforth took Da...

In spite of his weakness, he decided on another trip to America, and here, in 1867, he began a series of readings which left him in a far worse condition. Often at the close of...

Another friend of Pinch's was Mark Tapley, a rakish, good-humored fellow, whose one ambition was to find a position so uncomfortable and dismal that he would get some credit for...

The odd little dolls' dressmaker was cheerful and merry with all her trials and loved Lizzie Hexam very much. Wrayburn, the young lawyer, used to come to see them, but she did n...

As the lawyer held one in his hand, Lady Dedlock, seeing the handwriting, asked in an agitated voice who had written it. He answered that it was the work of one of his copyists....

So one day he went back to England and told her, and asked her if she would marry him. And with her sweet face on his breast she whispered that she had loved him all her life!

A long, long time ago there lived in London a young man named Clennam. He was an orphan, and was brought up by a stern uncle, who crushed and repressed his youth and finally for...

They drove together to see it. Strangely enough it seemed to be in the same street as Mr. Boffin's house, and stranger yet, the coach stopped at Mr. Boffin's own door. Her husba...

Of all the wretched boys there Nicholas pitied most a poor fellow named Smike, whom Squeers had made a drudge. He was tall and lanky and wore a little boy's suit, too short in t...

He heard a man telling another about the murder as he read the account in a newspaper, and knew that he must hide. He hastened then to a den he knew in a house beside the river,...

And even when the day came for him to bid them good-by and he climbed aboard the coach for London, he thought more of these things and his own good luck than of the home he was...

He began to address the company, and his first words showed that his mind had failed. He imagined he was still in the debtors' prison and that all the rich people about him were...

But the suit stopped of its own accord, for it was found now that there was no longer any fortune left to go to law about or to be willed to anybody. All the money had been eate...

As may be guessed, Simon Tappertit, the one-time apprentice of Varden the locksmith, rejoiced at this excitement as at a chance to show his talent for leadership. His apprentice...

So Martin started back to the home he had parted from a year before, poorer than he had left it, but at heart a better and a sounder man. His false pride was gone now. He mingle...

Fearful that he would be too late to save Darnay, Doctor Manette rushed to the yard, his white hair streaming in the wind, and told the leaders of the mob who he was--how he had...

Now the fat boy, for once in his life, had not been asleep when he had announced supper that evening. He had seen Tupman's love-making, and took the first occasion to tell the d...

There came a day when Bounderby was summoned on business to London, and Louisa stayed meanwhile at the Bounderby country house, which lay some distance from Coketown. Mrs. Spars...

In another moment Walter and Florence were both in his arms, too, and everybody was laughing and crying and talking together. Old Sol had been half-way around the world in his s...

Then Winkle was called. Knowing that he was a friend of Mr. Pickwick's, Mrs. Bardell's lawyers browbeat and puzzled him till poor Mr. Winkle had the air of a disconcerted pickpo...

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While the two girls were talking of this, Neville and Edwin Drood, who had gone with them as far as the door of the seminary, were walking back together. Mr. Crisparkle had told...