Hooray, hooray, hooray!--And now, Jack, let's have a little talk about Pussy.

Two pairs of nut-crackers?
Pass me one, and take the other.' Crack.

'How's Pussy getting on Jack ?' 'With her music?
Fairly.' 'What a dreadfully conscientious fellow you are, Jack! But _I_ know, Lord bless you! Inattentive, isn't she ?' 'She can learn anything, if she will.' '_If_ she will! Egad, that's it.

But if she won't ?' Crack!--on Mr.Jasper's part.
'How's she looking, Jack ?' Mr.Jasper's concentrated face again includes the portrait as he returns: 'Very like your sketch indeed.' 'I _am_ a little proud of it,' says the young fellow, glancing up at the sketch with complacency, and then shutting one eye, and taking a corrected prospect of it over a level bridge of nut-crackers in the air: 'Not badly hit off from memory.

But I ought to have caught that expression pretty well, for I have seen it often enough.' Crack!--on Edwin Drood's part.
Crack!--on Mr.Jasper's part.
'In point of fact,' the former resumes, after some silent dipping among his fragments of walnut with an air of pique, 'I see it whenever I go to see Pussy.