|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
 |
||||
|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
|
|
||||
321 burden. What a nice thing it is to think that it should be so, isn’t it?’ ‘Very,’ replied Kate. ‘I’ll walk with you part of the way, my dear,’ said Miss Knag, ‘for you must go very near our house; and as it’s quite dark, and our last servant went to the hospital a week ago, with St Anthony’s fire in her face, I shall be glad of your company.’ Kate would willingly have excused herself from this flattering companionship; but Miss Knag having adjusted her bonnet to her entire satisfaction, took her arm with an air which plainly showed how much she felt the compliment she was conferring, and they were in the street before she could say another word. ‘I fear,’ said Kate, hesitating, ‘that mama--my mother, I mean-- is waiting for me.’ ‘You needn’t make the least apology, my dear,’ said Miss Knag, smiling sweetly as she spoke; ‘I dare say she is a very respectable old person, and I shall be quite--hem--quite pleased to know her.’ As poor Mrs Nickleby was cooling--not her heels alone, but her limbs generally at the street corner, Kate had no alternative but to make her known to Miss Knag, who, doing the last new carriage customer at second-hand, acknowledged the introduction with condescending politeness. The three then walked away, arm in arm: with Miss Knag in the middle, in a special state of amiability. ‘I have taken such a fancy to your daughter, Mrs Nickleby, you can’t think,’ said Miss Knag, after she had proceeded a little distance in dignified silence. ‘I am delighted to hear it,’ said Mrs Nickleby; ‘though it is nothing new to me, that even strangers should like Kate.’ ‘Hem!’ cried Miss Knag. |
