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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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Agnes laid aside her work, and replied, folding her hands upon one another, and looking pensively at me out of those beautiful soft eyes of hers: 'I believe he is going to enter into partnership with papa.' 'What? Uriah? That mean, fawning fellow, worm himself into such promotion!' I cried, indignantly. 'Have you made no remonstrance about it, Agnes? Consider what a connexion it is likely to be. You must speak out. You must not allow your father to take such a mad step. You must prevent it, Agnes, while there's time.' Still looking at me, Agnes shook her head while I was speaking, with a faint smile at my warmth: and then replied: 'You remember our last conversation about papa? It was not long after that - not more than two or three days - when he gave me the first intimation of what I tell you. It was sad to see him struggling between his desire to represent it to me as a matter of choice on his part, and his inability to conceal that it was forced upon him. I felt very sorry.' 'Forced upon him, Agnes! Who forces it upon him?' 'Uriah,' she replied, after a moment's hesitation, 'has made himself indispensable to papa. He is subtle and watchful. He has mastered papa's weaknesses, fostered them, and taken advantage of them, until - to say all that I mean in a word, Trotwood, - until papa is afraid of him.' There was more that she might have said; more that she knew, or that she suspected; I clearly saw. I could not give her pain by asking what it was, for I knew that she withheld it from me, to spare her father. It had long been going on to this, I was sensible: yes, I could not but feel, on the least reflection, that it had been going on to this for a long time. I remained silent. 'His ascendancy over papa,' said Agnes, 'is very great. He professes humility and gratitude - with truth, perhaps: I hope so - but his position is really one of power, and I fear he makes a hard use of his power.' I said he was a hound, which, at the moment, was a great satisfaction to me. |
