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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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and he laughed, and we parted the best friends possible. 'Well, child,' said my aunt, when I went downstairs. 'And what of Mr. Dick, this morning?' I informed her that he sent his compliments, and was getting on very well indeed. 'What do you think of him?' said my aunt. I had some shadowy idea of endeavouring to evade the question, by replying that I thought him a very nice gentleman; but my aunt was not to be so put off, for she laid her work down in her lap, and said, folding her hands upon it: 'Come! Your sister Betsey Trotwood would have told me what she thought of anyone, directly. Be as like your sister as you can, and speak out!' 'Is he - is Mr. Dick - I ask because I don't know, aunt - is he at all out of his mind, then?' I stammered; for I felt I was on dangerous ground. 'Not a morsel,' said my aunt. 'Oh, indeed!' I observed faintly. 'If there is anything in the world,' said my aunt, with great decision and force of manner, 'that Mr. Dick is not, it's that.' I had nothing better to offer, than another timid, 'Oh, indeed!' 'He has been CALLED mad,' said my aunt. 'I have a selfish pleasure in saying he has been called mad, or I should not have had the benefit of his society and advice for these last ten years and upwards - in fact, ever since your sister, Betsey Trotwood, disappointed me.' 'So long as that?' I said. 'And nice people they were, who had the audacity to call him mad,' pursued my aunt. 'Mr. Dick is a sort of distant connexion of mine - it doesn't matter how; I needn't enter into that. If it hadn't been for me, his own brother would have shut him up for life. That's all.' |
