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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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542 to an awkward halt, at which the assembled ladies burst into a shrill laugh. ‘Object of my scorn and hatred!’ said Mr Lenville, ‘I hold ye in contempt.’ Nicholas laughed in very unexpected enjoyment of this performance; and the ladies, by way of encouragement, laughed louder than before; whereat Mr Lenville assumed his bitterest smile, and expressed his opinion that they were ‘minions’. ‘But they shall not protect ye!’ said the tragedian, taking an upward look at Nicholas, beginning at his boots and ending at the crown of his head, and then a downward one, beginning at the crown of his head, and ending at his boots--which two looks, as everybody knows, express defiance on the stage. ‘They shall not protect ye--boy!’ Thus speaking, Mr Lenville folded his arms, and treated Nicholas to that expression of face with which, in melodramatic performances, he was in the habit of regarding the tyrannical kings when they said, ‘Away with him to the deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat;’ and which, accompanied with a little jingling of fetters, had been known to produce great effects in its time. Whether it was the absence of the fetters or not, it made no very deep impression on Mr Lenville’s adversary, however, but rather seemed to increase the good-humour expressed in his countenance; in which stage of the contest, one or two gentlemen, who had come out expressly to witness the pulling of Nicholas’s nose, grew impatient, murmuring that if it were to be done at all it had better be done at once, and that if Mr Lenville didn’t mean to do it he had better say so, and not keep them waiting there. Thus |
