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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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1056 what you’d better keep and what you’d better burn, why, now’s your time, Slider.’ ‘There an’t no hurry for that,’ said Peg, with several knowing looks and winks. ‘Oh! very well!’ observed Squeers, ‘it don’t matter to me; you asked me, you know. I shouldn’t charge you nothing, being a friend. You’re the best judge of course. But you’re a bold woman, Slider.’ ‘How do you mean, bold?’ said Peg. ‘Why, I only mean that if it was me, I wouldn’t keep papers as might hang me, littering about when they might be turned into money--them as wasn’t useful made away with, and them as was, laid by somewheres, safe; that’s all,’ returned Squeers; ‘but everybody’s the best judge of their own affairs. All I say is, Slider, I wouldn’t do it.’ ‘Come,’ said Peg, ‘then you shall see ’em.’ ‘I don’t want to see ’em,’ replied Squeers, affecting to be out of humour; ‘don’t talk as if it was a treat. Show ’em to somebody else, and take their advice.’ Mr Squeers would, very likely, have carried on the farce of being offended a little longer, if Mrs Sliderskew, in her anxiety to restore herself to her former high position in his good graces, had not become so extremely affectionate that he stood at some risk of being smothered by her caresses. Repressing, with as good a grace as possible, these little familiarities--for which, there is reason to believe, the black bottle was at least as much to blame as any constitutional infirmity on the part of Mrs Sliderskew--he protested that he had only been joking: and, in proof of his unimpaired good-humour, that he was ready to examine the deeds |
