|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
 |
||||
|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
|
|
||||
55 ‘Don’t tease your uncle with questions when he is thinking only for our good, my love,’ said Mrs Nickleby. ‘Nicholas, my dear, I wish you would say something.’ ‘Yes, mother, yes,’ said Nicholas, who had hitherto remained silent and absorbed in thought. ‘If I am fortunate enough to be appointed to this post, sir, for which I am so imperfectly qualified, what will become of those I leave behind?’ ‘Your mother and sister, sir,’ replied Ralph, ‘will be provided for, in that case (not otherwise), by me, and placed in some sphere of life in which they will be able to be independent. That will be my immediate care; they will not remain as they are, one week after your departure, I will undertake.’ ‘Then,’ said Nicholas, starting gaily up, and wringing his uncle’s hand, ‘I am ready to do anything you wish me. Let us try our fortune with Mr Squeers at once; he can but refuse.’ ‘He won’t do that,’ said Ralph. ‘He will be glad to have you on my recommendation. Make yourself of use to him, and you’ll rise to be a partner in the establishment in no time. Bless me, only think! if he were to die, why your fortune’s made at once.’ ‘To be sure, I see it all,’ said poor Nicholas, delighted with a thousand visionary ideas, that his good spirits and his inexperience were conjuring up before him. ‘Or suppose some young nobleman who is being educated at the Hall, were to take a fancy to me, and get his father to appoint me his travelling tutor when he left, and when we come back from the continent, procured me some handsome appointment. Eh! uncle?’ ‘Ah, to be sure!’ sneered Ralph. ‘And who knows, but when he came to see me when I was settled (as he would of course), he might fall in love with Kate, who |
