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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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66 one eye. ‘They ain’t.’ ‘I thought they might be,’ said Squeers, coolly. ‘We have a good many of them; that boy’s one.’ ‘Him in the next box?’ said Snawley. Squeers nodded in the affirmative; his companion took another peep at the little boy on the trunk, and, turning round again, looked as if he were quite disappointed to see him so much like other boys, and said he should hardly have thought it. ‘He is,’ cried Squeers. ‘But about these boys of yours; you wanted to speak to me?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Snawley. ‘The fact is, I am not their father, Mr Squeers. I’m only their father-in-law.’ ‘Oh! Is that it?’ said the schoolmaster. ‘That explains it at once. I was wondering what the devil you were going to send them to Yorkshire for. Ha! ha! Oh, I understand now.’ ‘You see I have married the mother,’ pursued Snawley; ‘it’s expensive keeping boys at home, and as she has a little money in her own right, I am afraid (women are so very foolish, Mr Squeers) that she might be led to squander it on them, which would be their ruin, you know.’ ‘I see,’ returned Squeers, throwing himself back in his chair, and waving his hand. ‘And this,’ resumed Snawley, ‘has made me anxious to put them to some school a good distance off, where there are no holidays-- none of those ill-judged coming home twice a year that unsettle children’s minds so--and where they may rough it a little--you comprehend?’ ‘The payments regular, and no questions asked,’ said Squeers, nodding his head. |
