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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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30 off and on), and presented himself in Mr Nickleby’s room. He was a tall man of middle age, with two goggle eyes whereof one was a fixture, a rubicund nose, a cadaverous face, and a suit of clothes (if the term be allowable when they suited him not at all) much the worse for wear, very much too small, and placed upon such a short allowance of buttons that it was marvellous how he contrived to keep them on. ‘Was that half-past twelve, Noggs?’ said Mr Nickleby, in a sharp and grating voice. ‘Not more than five-and-twenty minutes by the--’ Noggs was going to add public-house clock, but recollecting himself, substituted ‘regular time.’ ‘My watch has stopped,’ said Mr Nickleby; ‘I don’t know from what cause.’ ‘Not wound up,’ said Noggs. ‘Yes it is,’ said Mr Nickleby. ‘Over-wound then,’ rejoined Noggs. ‘That can’t very well be,’ observed Mr Nickleby. ‘Must be,’ said Noggs. ‘Well!’ said Mr Nickleby, putting the repeater back in his pocket; ‘perhaps it is.’ Noggs gave a peculiar grunt, as was his custom at the end of all disputes with his master, to imply that he (Noggs) triumphed; and (as he rarely spoke to anybody unless somebody spoke to him) fell into a grim silence, and rubbed his hands slowly over each other: cracking the joints of his fingers, and squeezing them into all possible distortions. The incessant performance of this routine on every occasion, and the communication of a fixed and rigid look to his unaffected eye, so as to make it uniform with the other, and to |
