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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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27 comfortable fire--doing anything but reading their Bibles, I’ll answer for it--Heathcliff, myself, and the unhappy ploughboy were commanded to take our Prayer-books, and mount: we were ranged in a row, on a sack of corn, groaning and shivering, and hoping that Joseph would shiver too, so that he might give us a short homily for his own sake. A vain idea! The service lasted precisely three hours; and yet my brother had the face to exclaim, when he saw us descending, ‘What, done already?’ On Sunday evenings we used to be permitted to play, if we did not make much noise; now a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners! “‘You forget you have a master here,’ says the tyrant. ‘I’ll demolish the first who puts me out of temper! I insist on perfect sobriety and silence. Oh, boy! was that you? Frances, darling, pull his hair as you go by; I heard him snap his fingers.’ Frances pulled his hair heartily, and then went and seated herself on her husband’s knee; and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour--foolish palaver that we should be ashamed of. We made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser. I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes Joseph on an errand from the stables. He tears down my handiwork, boxes my ears, and croaks--“‘T’ maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath nut o’ered, und t’ sahnd uh t’ gospel still i’ yer lugs, and yah darr be laiking! shame on ye! sit ye dahn, ill childer! they’s good books eneugh if ye’ll read ’em: sit ye dahn, and think uh yer sowls!’ “Saying this, he compelled us so to square our positions that we might receive from the far-off fire a dull ray to show us the text of the lumber he thrust upon us. I could not bear the employment. I took my dingy volume by the scroop, and hurled it into the dog |
