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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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52 uncle, my dear, how far you went in French and extras.’ The poor girl was about to murmur something, when her uncle stopped her, very unceremoniously. ‘We must try and get you apprenticed at some boarding-school,’ said Ralph. ‘You have not been brought up too delicately for that, I hope?’ ‘No, indeed, uncle,’ replied the weeping girl. ‘I will try to do anything that will gain me a home and bread.’ ‘Well, well,’ said Ralph, a little softened, either by his niece’s beauty or her distress (stretch a point, and say the latter). ‘You must try it, and if the life is too hard, perhaps dressmaking or tambour-work will come lighter. Have you ever done anything, sir?’ (turning to his nephew.) ‘No,’ replied Nicholas, bluntly. ‘No, I thought not!’ said Ralph. ‘This is the way my brother brought up his children, ma’am.’ ‘Nicholas has not long completed such education as his poor father could give him,’ rejoined Mrs Nickleby, ‘and he was thinking of--’ ‘Of making something of him someday,’ said Ralph. ‘The old story; always thinking, and never doing. If my brother had been a man of activity and prudence, he might have left you a rich woman, ma’am: and if he had turned his son into the world, as my father turned me, when I wasn’t as old as that boy by a year and a half, he would have been in a situation to help you, instead of being a burden upon you, and increasing your distress. My brother was a thoughtless, inconsiderate man, Mrs Nickleby, and nobody, I am sure, can have better reason to feel that, than you.’ This appeal set the widow upon thinking that perhaps she |
