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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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624 ‘What more do you know about him?’ demanded Ralph. ‘Devilish little, I’m sorry to say,’ replied Squeers. ‘The money was paid for some six or eight year, and then it stopped. He had given an address in London, had this chap; but when it came to the point, of course nobody knowed anything about him. So I kept the lad out of--out of--’ ‘Charity?’ suggested Ralph drily. ‘Charity, to be sure,’ returned Squeers, rubbing his knees, ‘and when he begins to be useful in a certain sort of way, this young scoundrel of a Nickleby comes and carries him off. But the most vexatious and aggeravating part of the whole affair is,’ said Squeers, dropping his voice, and drawing his chair still closer to Ralph, ‘that some questions have been asked about him at last-- not of me, but, in a roundabout kind of way, of people in our village. So, that just when I might have had all arrears paid up, perhaps, and perhaps--who knows? such things have happened in our business before--a present besides for putting him out to a farmer, or sending him to sea, so that he might never turn up to disgrace his parents, supposing him to be a natural boy, as many of our boys are--damme, if that villain of a Nickleby don’t collar him in open day, and commit as good as highway robbery upon my pocket.’ ‘We will both cry quits with him before long,’ said Ralph, laying his hand on the arm of the Yorkshire schoolmaster. ‘Quits!’ echoed Squeers. ‘Ah! and I should like to leave a small balance in his favour, to be settled when he can. I only wish Mrs Squeers could catch hold of him. Bless her heart! She’d murder him, Mr Nickleby--she would, as soon as eat her dinner.’ ‘We will talk of this again,’ said Ralph. ‘I must have time to |
