sketches – Page 2 – Gerry Mooney Illustrating Dickens

Ada, Esther and Lady Dedlock

The weather had been all the week extremely sultry, but the storm broke so suddenly—upon us, at least, in that sheltered spot—that before we reached the outskirts of the wood the thunder and lightning were frequent and the rain came plunging through the leaves as if every drop were a great leaden bead. As it was not a time for standing among trees, we ran out of the wood, and up and down the moss-grown steps which crossed the plantation-fence like two broad-staved ladders placed back to back, and made for a keeper’s lodge which was close at hand. We had often noticed the dark beauty of this lodge standing in a deep twilight of trees, and how the ivy clustered over it, and how there was a steep hollow near, where we had once seen the keeper’s dog dive down into the fern as if it were water.

The Ghost’s Walk

Mrs. Rouncewell, Rosa, and Watt Rouncewell

She seats herself in a large chair by the fast-darkening window and tells them: “In the wicked days, my dears, of King Charles the First–I mean, of course, in the wicked days of the rebels who leagued themselves against that excellent king–Sir Morbury Dedlock was the owner of Chesney Wold. Whether there was any account of a ghost in the family before those days, I can’t say. I should think it very likely indeed.”

Mrs. Rouncewell holds this opinion because she considers that a family of such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. She regards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes, a genteel distinction to which the common people have no claim.

Mr. Krook

As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides by the wall of Lincoln’s Inn, intercepting the light within a couple of yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern that an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in the shop. Turning towards the door, he now caught sight of us.

‘Hi, hi!’ said the old man, coming to the door. ‘Have you anything to sell?’

Allan Woodcourt and Jo

‘Stop him, stop him!’ cries the woman, almost breathless. ‘Stop him, sir!’

He darts across the road into the boy’s path, but the boy is quicker than he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, comes up half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still the woman follows, crying, ‘Stop him, sir, pray stop him!’