Sentence No. 92 · 27 June 2026
Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens — A Christmas Carol (1843) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
Notice the three parallel verbs — 'loved', 'wished', and 'dreaded' — each introduced by 'and' and hanging off the same 'as if he' frame. When you spot a triplet like this, the fragments line up in the order their verbs escalate emotionally.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 7 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A father holds his frail child close by the hearth. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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