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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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500 sly. ‘I am so anxious to know you, so anxious to cultivate your good opinion, so desirous that there should be a delicious kind of harmonious family understanding between us,’ said Sir Mulberry, ‘that you mustn’t think I’m disinterested in what I do. I’m infernal selfish; I am--upon my soul I am.’ ‘I am sure you can’t be selfish, Sir Mulberry!’ replied Mrs Nickleby. ‘You have much too open and generous a countenance for that.’ ‘What an extraordinary observer you are!’ said Sir Mulberry Hawk. ‘Oh no, indeed, I don’t see very far into things, Sir Mulberry,’ replied Mrs Nickleby, in a tone of voice which left the baronet to infer that she saw very far indeed. ‘I am quite afraid of you,’ said the baronet. ‘Upon my soul,’ repeated Sir Mulberry, looking round to his companions; ‘I am afraid of Mrs Nickleby. She is so immensely sharp.’ Messrs Pyke and Pluck shook their heads mysteriously, and observed together that they had found that out long ago; upon which Mrs Nickleby tittered, and Sir Mulberry laughed, and Pyke and Pluck roared. ‘But where’s my brother-in-law, Sir Mulberry?’ inquired Mrs Nickleby. ‘I shouldn’t be here without him. I hope he’s coming.’ ‘Pyke,’ said Sir Mulberry, taking out his toothpick and lolling back in his chair, as if he were too lazy to invent a reply to this question. ‘Where’s Ralph Nickleby?’ ‘Pluck,’ said Pyke, imitating the baronet’s action, and turning the lie over to his friend, ‘where’s Ralph Nickleby?’ Mr Pluck was about to return some evasive reply, when the |
