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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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199 recollected having caught a passing glimpse of that strange figure before. ‘Excuse my curiosity,’ she said, ‘but did I not see you in the coachyard, on the morning my brother went away to Yorkshire?’ Newman cast a wistful glance on Mrs Nickleby and said ‘No,’ most unblushingly. ‘No!’ exclaimed Kate, ‘I should have said so anywhere.’ ‘You’d have said wrong,’ rejoined Newman. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been out for three weeks. I’ve had the gout.’ Newman was very, very far from having the appearance of a gouty subject, and so Kate could not help thinking; but the conference was cut short by Mrs Nickleby’s insisting on having the door shut, lest Mr Noggs should take cold, and further persisting in sending the servant girl for a coach, for fear he should bring on another attack of his disorder. To both conditions, Newman was compelled to yield. Presently, the coach came; and, after many sorrowful farewells, and a great deal of running backwards and forwards across the pavement on the part of Miss La Creevy, in the course of which the yellow turban came into violent contact with sundry foot-passengers, it (that is to say the coach, not the turban) went away again, with the two ladies and their luggage inside; and Newman, despite all Mrs Nickleby’s assurances that it would be his death--on the box beside the driver. They went into the city, turning down by the river side; and, after a long and very slow drive, the streets being crowded at that hour with vehicles of every kind, stopped in front of a large old dingy house in Thames Street: the door and windows of which were so bespattered with mud, that it would have appeared to have been uninhabited for years. |
