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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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1050 part of a deep-laid system. There an’t another chap in the school but that boy as would have died exactly at the end of the quarter: taking it out of me to the very last, and then carrying his spite to the utmost extremity. “The juniorest Palmer said he wished he was in Heaven.” I really don’t know, I do not know what’s to be done with that young fellow; he’s always a-wishing something horrid. He said once, he wished he was a donkey, because then he wouldn’t have a father as didn’t love him! Pretty wicious that for a child of six!’ Mr Squeers was so much moved by the contemplation of this hardened nature in one so young, that he angrily put up the letter, and sought, in a new train of ideas, a subject of consolation. ‘It’s a long time to have been a-lingering in London,’ he said; ‘and this is a precious hole to come and live in, even if it has been only for a week or so. Still, one hundred pound is five boys, and five boys takes a whole year to pay one hundred pounds, and there’s their keep to be substracted, besides. There’s nothing lost, neither, by one’s being here; because the boys’ money comes in just the same as if I was at home, and Mrs Squeers she keeps them in order. There’ll be some lost time to make up, of course. There’ll be an arrear of flogging as’ll have to be gone through: still, a couple of days makes that all right, and one don’t mind a little extra work for one hundred pound. It’s pretty nigh the time to wait upon the old woman. From what she said last night, I suspect that if I’m to succeed at all, I shall succeed tonight; so I’ll have half a glass more, to wish myself success, and put myself in spirits. Mrs Squeers, my dear, your health!’ Leering with his one eye as if the lady to whom he drank had been actually present, Mr Squeers--in his enthusiasm, no doubt-- |
