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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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728 the court.’ ‘There is a double wallflower at No. 6, in the court, is there?’ said Nicholas. ‘Yes, is there!’ replied Tim, ‘and planted in a cracked jug, without a spout. There were hyacinths there, this last spring, blossoming, in--but you’ll laugh at that, of course.’ ‘At what?’ ‘At their blossoming in old blacking-bottles,’ said Tim. ‘Not I, indeed,’ returned Nicholas. Tim looked wistfully at him, for a moment, as if he were encouraged by the tone of this reply to be more communicative on the subject; and sticking behind his ear, a pen that he had been making, and shutting up his knife with a smart click, said, ‘They belong to a sickly bedridden hump-backed boy, and seem to be the only pleasure, Mr Nickleby, of his sad existence. How many years is it,’ said Tim, pondering, ‘since I first noticed him, quite a little child, dragging himself about on a pair of tiny crutches? Well! Well! Not many; but though they would appear nothing, if I thought of other things, they seem a long, long time, when I think of him. It is a sad thing,’ said Tim, breaking off, ‘to see a little deformed child sitting apart from other children, who are active and merry, watching the games he is denied the power to share in. He made my heart ache very often.’ ‘It is a good heart,’ said Nicholas, ‘that disentangles itself from the close avocations of every day, to heed such things. You were saying--’ ‘That the flowers belonged to this poor boy,’ said Tim; ‘that’s all. When it is fine weather, and he can crawl out of bed, he draws a chair close to the window, and sits there, looking at them and |
