|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
 |
||||
|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
|
|
||||
1017 an elaborate caution, calculated to discompose the nerves of an invalid rather more than the entry of a horse-soldier at full gallop; ‘how do you find yourself tonight? I hope you are better.’ ‘Almost well, mama,’ Kate would reply, laying down her work, and taking Madeline’s hand in hers. ‘Kate!’ Mrs Nickleby would say, reprovingly, ‘don’t talk so loud’ (the worthy lady herself talking in a whisper that would have made the blood of the stoutest man run cold in his veins). Kate would take this reproof very quietly, and Mrs Nickleby, making every board creak and every thread rustle as she moved stealthily about, would add: ‘My son Nicholas has just come home, and I have come, according to custom, my dear, to know, from your own lips, exactly how you are; for he won’t take my account, and never will.’ ‘He is later than usual to-night,’ perhaps Madeline would reply. ‘Nearly half an hour.’ ‘Well, I never saw such people in all my life as you are, for time, up here!’ Mrs Nickleby would exclaim in great astonishment; ‘I declare I never did! I had not the least idea that Nicholas was after his time, not the smallest. Mr Nickleby used to say--your poor papa, I am speaking of, Kate my dear--used to say, that appetite was the best clock in the world, but you have no appetite, my dear Miss Bray, I wish you had, and upon my word I really think you ought to take something that would give you one. I am sure I don’t know, but I have heard that two or three dozen native lobsters give an appetite, though that comes to the same thing after all, for I suppose you must have an appetite before you can take ’em. If I said lobsters, I meant oysters, but of course it’s all the same, though really how you came to know about Nicholas--’ |
