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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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'My Agnes!' he exclaimed, with a sickly, angular contortion of himself. 'Would you be so good as call her Agnes, Master Copperfield!' 'For the sake of Agnes Wickfield - Heaven bless her!' 'Thank you for that blessing, Master Copperfield!'he interposed. 'I will tell you what I should, under any other circumstances, as soon have thought of telling to - Jack Ketch.' 'To who, sir?' said Uriah, stretching out his neck, and shading his ear with his hand. 'To the hangman,' I returned. 'The most unlikely person I could think of,' - though his own face had suggested the allusion quite as a natural sequence. 'I am engaged to another young lady. I hope that contents you.' 'Upon your soul?' said Uriah. I was about indignantly to give my assertion the confirmation he required, when he caught hold of my hand, and gave it a squeeze. 'Oh, Master Copperfield!' he said. 'If you had only had the condescension to return my confidence when I poured out the fulness of my art, the night I put you so much out of the way by sleeping before your sitting-room fire, I never should have doubted you. As it is, I'm sure I'll take off mother directly, and only too appy. I know you'll excuse the precautions of affection, won't you? What a pity, Master Copperfield, that you didn't condescend to return my confidence! I'm sure I gave you every opportunity. But you never have condescended to me, as much as I could have wished. I know you have never liked me, as I have liked you!' All this time he was squeezing my hand with his damp fishy fingers, while I made every effort I decently could to get it away. But I was quite unsuccessful. He drew it under the sleeve of his mulberry-coloured great-coat, and I walked on, almost upon compulsion, arm-in-arm with him. 'Shall we turn?' said Uriah, by and by wheeling me face about towards the town, on which the early moon was now shining, silvering the distant windows. |
