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'Wait a moment,' said the stranger. 'I'd like to give the boy something,' and wrapping a coin in some old paper from his pocket, handed it to me.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
is not '',handed it to me '' supposed to be ''handing it to me '' ,because subject was not repeated again?
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Wait a moment,' said the stranger. 'I'd like to give the boy something,' and (wrapping a coin in some old paper from his pocket,) handed it to me.
Nowadays I think you would put the comma after the 'and'.
You then have a phrase between the commas in the progressive tense.
If you remove that, you have a simple pair of verbs wth the same subject.
(But removing that phrase does leave the 'it' without a preceding noun, so you really need it the main sentence.)
Wait a moment,' said the stranger. 'I'd like to give the boy something,' and handed it (the coin) to me.
It could be two progressives
Wrapping the coin
And handing it to me.
Both done after he said 'wait'.
But what he has is two simple past verbs
He said 'wait'
And
he handed me the coin.
The progressive is what happened as he said 'wait'.
I agree it does sound a bit strange to modern ears.
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I agree about the comma after the 'and' because that's where, in speech, we'd pause before delivering the next bit.
Is it really unusual to use this form now, do you mean, Thar?
Because we still do manage to do two things at once: - "...and, rising from her chair, she smiled at me."
"...and, tears streaming down his face, he turned away.", " and, shivering with cold, she knocked on the door."
Or have I completely misunderstood?
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