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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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367 heavier, and brand him with such marks as he should carry to his grave, go to it when he would.’ ‘You hear?’ said Ralph, turning to Mrs Nickleby. ‘Penitence, this!’ ‘Oh dear me!’ cried Mrs Nickleby, ‘I don’t know what to think, I really don’t.’ ‘Do not speak just now, mama, I entreat you,’ said Kate. ‘Dear Nicholas, I only tell you, that you may know what wickedness can prompt, but they accuse you of--a ring is missing, and they dare to say that--’ ‘The woman,’ said Nicholas, haughtily, ‘the wife of the fellow from whom these charges come, dropped--as I suppose--a worthless ring among some clothes of mine, early in the morning on which I left the house. At least, I know that she was in the bedroom where they lay, struggling with an unhappy child, and that I found it when I opened my bundle on the road. I returned it, at once, by coach, and they have it now.’ ‘I knew, I knew,’ said Kate, looking towards her uncle. ‘About this boy, love, in whose company they say you left?’ ‘The boy, a silly, helpless creature, from brutality and hard usage, is with me now,’ rejoined Nicholas. ‘You hear?’ said Ralph, appealing to the mother again, ’everything proved, even upon his own confession. Do you choose to restore that boy, sir?’ ‘No, I do not,’ replied Nicholas. ‘You do not?’ sneered Ralph. ‘No,’ repeated Nicholas, ‘not to the man with whom I found him. I would that I knew on whom he has the claim of birth: I might wring something from his sense of shame, if he were dead to |
