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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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702 my boy, call up one of them coaches.’ ‘A coach, father!’ cried little Wackford. ‘Yes, a coach, sir,’ replied Squeers, feasting his eyes upon the countenance of Smike. ‘Damn the expense. Let’s have him in a coach.’ ‘What’s he been a doing of?’ asked a labourer with a hod of bricks, against whom and a fellow-labourer Mr Squeers had backed, on the first jerk of the umbrella. ‘Everything!’ replied Mr Squeers, looking fixedly at his old pupil in a sort of rapturous trance. ‘Everything--running away, sir--joining in bloodthirsty attacks upon his master--there’s nothing that’s bad that he hasn’t done. Oh, what a delicious go is this here, good Lord!’ The man looked from Squeers to Smike; but such mental faculties as the poor fellow possessed, had utterly deserted him. The coach came up; Master Wackford entered; Squeers pushed in his prize, and following close at his heels, pulled up the glasses. The coachman mounted his box and drove slowly off, leaving the two bricklayers, and an old apple-woman, and a town-made little boy returning from an evening school, who had been the only witnesses of the scene, to meditate upon it at their leisure. Mr Squeers sat himself down on the opposite seat to the unfortunate Smike, and, planting his hands firmly on his knees, looked at him for some five minutes, when, seeming to recover from his trance, he uttered a loud laugh, and slapped his old pupil’s face several times--taking the right and left sides alternately. ‘It isn’t a dream!’ said Squeers. ‘That’s real flesh and blood! I know the feel of it!’ and being quite assured of his good fortune by |
