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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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1007 you?’ His niece’s bosom heaved with the indignant excitement into which he had lashed her, but she gave him no reply. ‘Now, Gride, see here,’ said Ralph. ‘This fellow--I grieve to say my brother’s son: a reprobate and profligate, stained with every mean and selfish crime--this fellow, coming here today to disturb a solemn ceremony, and knowing that the consequence of his presenting himself in another man’s house at such a time, and persisting in remaining there, must be his being kicked into the streets and dragged through them like the vagabond he is--this fellow, mark you, brings with him his sister as a protection, thinking we would not expose a silly girl to the degradation and indignity which is no novelty to him; and, even after I have warned her of what must ensue, he still keeps her by him, as you see, and clings to her apron-strings like a cowardly boy to his mother’s. Is not this a pretty fellow to talk as big as you have heard him now?’ ‘And as I heard him last night,’ said Arthur Gride; ‘as I heard him last night when he sneaked into my house, and--he! he! he!-- very soon sneaked out again, when I nearly frightened him to death. And he wanting to marry Miss Madeline too! Oh dear! Is there anything else he’d like? Anything else we can do for him, besides giving her up? Would he like his debts paid and his house furnished, and a few bank notes for shaving paper if he shaves at all? He! he! he!’ ‘You will remain, girl, will you?’ said Ralph, turning upon Kate again, ‘to be hauled downstairs like a drunken drab, as I swear you shall if you stop here? No answer! Thank your brother for what follows. Gride, call down Bray--and not his daughter. Let them keep her above.’ |
