|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
 |
||||
|
Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
||||
|
|
||||
1045 when he had reported favourably of his treatment of a sickly boy who had died under his hands (and whose death was very convenient to Ralph and his clients, but this he did not say), and finally hinted that the fifty pounds might be increased to seventy- five, or, in the event of very great success, even to a hundred. These arguments at length concluded, Mr Squeers crossed his legs, uncrossed them, scratched his head, rubbed his eye, examined the palms of his hands, and bit his nails, and after exhibiting many other signs of restlessness and indecision, asked ‘whether one hundred pound was the highest that Mr Nickleby could go.’ Being answered in the affirmative, he became restless again, and, after some thought, and an unsuccessful inquiry ‘whether he couldn’t go another fifty,’ said he supposed he must try and do the most he could for a friend: which was always his maxim, and therefore he undertook the job. ‘But how are you to get at the woman?’ he said; ‘that’s what it is as puzzles me.’ ‘I may not get at her at all,’ replied Ralph, ‘but I’ll try. I have hunted people in this city, before now, who have been better hid than she; and I know quarters in which a guinea or two, carefully spent, will often solve darker riddles than this. Ay, and keep them close too, if need be! I hear my man ringing at the door. We may as well part. You had better not come to and fro, but wait till you hear from me.’ ‘Good!’ returned Squeers. ‘I say! If you shouldn’t find her out, you’ll pay expenses at the Saracen, and something for loss of time?’ ‘Well,’ said Ralph, testily; ‘yes! You have nothing more to say?’ Squeers shaking his head, Ralph accompanied him to the |
