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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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864 done, he dragged the low chair a little nearer to Ralph’s high stool, and looking upwards into his immovable face, said, ‘What would you say to me, if I was to tell you that I was--that I was--going to be married?’ ‘I should tell you,’ replied Ralph, looking coldly down upon him, ‘that for some purpose of your own you told a lie, and that it wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last; that I wasn’t surprised and wasn’t to be taken in.’ ‘Then I tell you seriously that I am,’ said old Arthur. ‘And I tell you seriously,’ rejoined Ralph, ‘what I told you this minute. Stay. Let me look at you. There’s a liquorish devilry in your face. What is this?’ ‘I wouldn’t deceive you, you know,’ whined Arthur Gride; ‘I couldn’t do it, I should be mad to try. I, I, to deceive Mr Nickleby! The pigmy to impose upon the giant. I ask again--he, he, he!-- what should you say to me if I was to tell you that I was going to be married?’ ‘To some old hag?’ said Ralph. ‘No, No,’ cried Arthur, interrupting him, and rubbing his hands in an ecstasy. ‘Wrong, wrong again. Mr Nickleby for once at fault; out, quite out! To a young and beautiful girl; fresh, lovely, bewitching, and not nineteen. Dark eyes, long eyelashes, ripe and ruddy lips that to look at is to long to kiss, beautiful clustering hair that one’s fingers itch to play with, such a waist as might make a man clasp the air involuntarily, thinking of twining his arm about it, little feet that tread so lightly they hardly seem to walk upon the ground--to marry all this, sir, this--hey, hey!’ ‘This is something more than common drivelling,’ said Ralph, after listening with a curled lip to the old sinner’s raptures. ‘The |
