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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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479 ‘Alone, eh?’ cried Sir Mulberry, affecting surprise. ‘Oh, very good. I’ll walk into the next room here. Don’t keep me long, that’s all.’ So saying, Sir Mulberry took up his hat, and humming a fragment of a song disappeared through the door of communication between the two drawing-rooms, and closed it after him. ‘Now, my lord,’ said Ralph, ‘what is it?’ ‘Nickleby,’ said his client, throwing himself along the sofa on which he had been previously seated, so as to bring his lips nearer to the old man’s ear, ‘what a pretty creature your niece is!’ ‘Is she, my lord?’ replied Ralph. ‘Maybe--maybe--I don’t trouble my head with such matters.’ ‘You know she’s a deyvlish fine girl,’ said the client. ‘You must know that, Nickleby. Come, don’t deny that.’ ‘Yes, I believe she is considered so,’ replied Ralph. ‘Indeed, I know she is. If I did not, you are an authority on such points, and your taste, my lord--on all points, indeed--is undeniable.’ Nobody but the young man to whom these words were addressed could have been deaf to the sneering tone in which they were spoken, or blind to the look of contempt by which they were accompanied. But Lord Frederick Verisopht was both, and took them to be complimentary. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘p’raps you’re a little right, and p’raps you’re a little wrong--a little of both, Nickleby. I want to know where this beauty lives, that I may have another peep at her, Nickleby.’ ‘Really--’ Ralph began in his usual tones. ‘Don’t talk so loud,’ cried the other, achieving the great point of his lesson to a miracle. ‘I don’t want Hawk to hear.’ |
