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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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1083 ‘Tim,’ said Charles and Ned together, ‘pray, Tim, pray now, don’t.’ Tim, taking the hint, stifled his indignation as well as he could, and suffered it to escape through his spectacles, with the additional safety-valve of a short hysterical laugh now and then, which seemed to relieve him mightily. ‘As nobody bids me to a seat,’ said Ralph, looking round, ‘I’ll take one, for I am fatigued with walking. And now, if you please, gentlemen, I wish to know--I demand to know; I have the right-- what you have to say to me, which justifies such a tone as you have assumed, and that underhand interference in my affairs which, I have reason to suppose, you have been practising. I tell you plainly, gentlemen, that little as I care for the opinion of the world (as the slang goes), I don’t choose to submit quietly to slander and malice. Whether you suffer yourselves to be imposed upon too easily, or wilfully make yourselves parties to it, the result to me is the same. In either case, you can’t expect from a plain man like myself much consideration or forbearance.’ So coolly and deliberately was this said, that nine men out of ten, ignorant of the circumstances, would have supposed Ralph to be really an injured man. There he sat, with folded arms; paler than usual, certainly, and sufficiently ill-favoured, but quite collected--far more so than the brothers or the exasperated Tim-- and ready to face out the worst. ‘Very well, sir,’ said brother Charles. ‘Very well. Brother Ned, will you ring the bell?’ ‘Charles, my dear fellow! stop one instant,’ returned the other. ‘It will be better for Mr Nickleby and for our object that he should remain silent, if he can, till we have said what we have to say. I |
