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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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366 ‘Or bronze,’ said Ralph, quietly; ‘there is not hardihood enough in flesh and blood to face it out.’ ‘Oh dear, dear!’ cried Mrs Nickleby, ‘that things should have come to such a pass as this!’ ‘Who speaks in a tone, as if I had done wrong, and brought disgrace on them?’ said Nicholas, looking round. ‘Your mother, sir,’ replied Ralph, motioning towards her. ‘Whose ears have been poisoned by you,’ said Nicholas; ‘by you--who, under pretence of deserving the thanks she poured upon you, heaped every insult, wrong, and indignity upon my head. You, who sent me to a den where sordid cruelty, worthy of yourself, runs wanton, and youthful misery stalks precocious; where the lightness of childhood shrinks into the heaviness of age, and its every promise blights, and withers as it grows. I call Heaven to witness,’ said Nicholas, looking eagerly round, ‘that I have seen all this, and that he knows it.’ ‘Refute these calumnies,’ said Kate, ‘and be more patient, so that you may give them no advantage. Tell us what you really did, and show that they are untrue.’ ‘Of what do they--or of what does he--accuse me?’ said Nicholas. ‘First, of attacking your master, and being within an ace of qualifying yourself to be tried for murder,’ interposed Ralph. ‘I speak plainly, young man, bluster as you will.’ ‘I interfered,’ said Nicholas, ‘to save a miserable creature from the vilest cruelty. In so doing, I inflicted such punishment upon a wretch as he will not readily forget, though far less than he deserved from me. If the same scene were renewed before me now, I would take the same part; but I would strike harder and |
