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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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1100 and uncomfortable by the presence of the unseen person; for he repeated this action several times, and at length, as if in a nervous state which rendered him positively unable to turn away from the place, sat so as to have it opposite him, muttering as an excuse that he could not bear the light. The brothers conferred apart for a short time: their manner showing that they were agitated. Ralph glanced at them twice or thrice, and ultimately said, with a great effort to recover his self- possession, ‘Now, what is this? If I am brought from home at this time of night, let it be for something. What have you got to tell me?’ After a short pause, he added, ‘Is my niece dead?’ He had struck upon a key which rendered the task of commencement an easier one. Brother Charles turned, and said that it was a death of which they had to tell him, but that his niece was well. ‘You don’t mean to tell me,’ said Ralph, as his eyes brightened, ‘that her brother’s dead? No, that’s too good. I’d not believe it, if you told me so. It would be too welcome news to be true.’ ‘Shame on you, you hardened and unnatural man,’ cried the other brother, warmly. ‘Prepare yourself for intelligence which, if you have any human feeling in your breast, will make even you shrink and tremble. What if we tell you that a poor unfortunate boy: a child in everything but never having known one of those tender endearments, or one of those lightsome hours which make our childhood a time to be remembered like a happy dream through all our after life: a warm-hearted, harmless, affectionate creature, who never offended you, or did you wrong, but on whom you have vented the malice and hatred you have conceived for your nephew, and whom you have made an instrument for |
