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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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979 the pettifogging spirit is the same. But perhaps you bring orders, eh? Have you any fresh orders for my daughter, sir?’ Nicholas understood the tone of triumph in which this interrogatory was put; but remembering the necessity of supporting his assumed character, produced a scrap of paper purporting to contain a list of some subjects for drawings which his employer desired to have executed; and with which he had prepared himself in case of any such contingency. ‘Oh!’ said Mr Bray. ‘These are the orders, are they?’ ‘Since you insist upon the term, sir, yes,’ replied Nicholas. ‘Then you may tell your master,’ said Bray, tossing the paper back again, with an exulting smile, ‘that my daughter, Miss Madeline Bray, condescends to employ herself no longer in such labours as these; that she is not at his beck and call, as he supposes her to be; that we don’t live upon his money, as he flatters himself we do; that he may give whatever he owes us, to the first beggar that passes his shop, or add it to his own profits next time he calculates them; and that he may go to the devil for me. That’s my acknowledgment of his orders, sir!’ ‘And this is the independence of a man who sells his daughter as he has sold that weeping girl!’ thought Nicholas. The father was too much absorbed with his own exultation to mark the look of scorn which, for an instant, Nicholas could not have suppressed had he been upon the rack. ‘There,’ he continued, after a short silence, ‘you have your message and can retire--unless you have any further--ha!--any further orders.’ ‘I have none,’ said Nicholas; ‘nor, in the consideration of the station you once held, have I used that or any other word which, however harmless in itself, could be supposed to imply authority |
