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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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325 Having given utterance to these ejaculations with a very profound and thoughtful air, Mr Knag slowly snuffed two kitchen candles on the counter, and two more in the window, and then snuffed himself from a box in his waistcoat pocket. There was something very impressive in the ghostly air with which all this was done; and as Mr Knag was a tall lank gentleman of solemn features, wearing spectacles, and garnished with much less hair than a gentleman bordering on forty, or thereabouts, usually boasts, Mrs Nickleby whispered her daughter that she thought he must be literary. ‘Past ten,’ said Mr Knag, consulting his watch. ‘Thomas, close the warehouse.’ Thomas was a boy nearly half as tall as a shutter, and the warehouse was a shop about the size of three hackney coaches. ‘Ah!’ said Mr Knag once more, heaving a deep sigh as he restored to its parent shelf the book he had been reading. ‘Well-- yes--I believe supper is ready, sister.’ With another sigh Mr Knag took up the kitchen candles from the counter, and preceded the ladies with mournful steps to a back-parlour, where a charwoman, employed in the absence of the sick servant, and remunerated with certain eighteenpences to be deducted from her wages due, was putting the supper out. ‘Mrs Blockson,’ said Miss Knag, reproachfully, ‘how very often I have begged you not to come into the room with your bonnet on!’ ‘I can’t help it, Miss Knag,’ said the charwoman, bridling up on the shortest notice. ‘There’s been a deal o’cleaning to do in this house, and if you don’t like it, I must trouble you to look out for somebody else, for it don’t hardly pay me, and that’s the truth, if I was to be hung this minute.’ |
