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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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1080 although the circumstance had attracted the attention of the informant, he had not spoken to them at the time, nor made any inquiry afterwards. This possessed him with the idea that, perhaps, Peg Sliderskew had been apprehended for the robbery, and that Mr Squeers, being with her at the time, had been apprehended also, on suspicion of being a confederate. If this were so, the fact must be known to Gride; and to Gride’s house he directed his steps; now thoroughly alarmed, and fearful that there were indeed plots afoot, tending to his discomfiture and ruin. Arrived at the usurer’s house, he found the windows close shut, the dingy blinds drawn down; all was silent, melancholy, and deserted. But this was its usual aspect. He knocked--gently at first--then loud and vigorously. Nobody came. He wrote a few words in pencil on a card, and having thrust it under the door was going away, when a noise above, as though a window-sash were stealthily raised, caught his ear, and looking up he could just discern the face of Gride himself, cautiously peering over the house parapet from the window of the garret. Seeing who was below, he drew it in again; not so quickly, however, but that Ralph let him know he was observed, and called to him to come down. The call being repeated, Gride looked out again, so cautiously that no part of the old man’s body was visible. The sharp features and white hair appearing alone, above the parapet, looked like a severed head garnishing the wall. ‘Hush!’ he cried. ‘Go away, go away!’ ‘Come down,’ said Ralph, beckoning him. ‘Go a-way!’ squeaked Gride, shaking his head in a sort of ecstasy of impatience. ‘Don’t speak to me, don’t knock, don’t call |
