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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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623 sent, any compensation--’ ‘Ah!’ cried Ralph, interrupting him. ‘You needn’t go on.’ After a long pause, during which Ralph appeared absorbed in contemplation, he again broke silence by asking: ‘Who is this boy that he took with him?’ Squeers stated his name. ‘Was he young or old, healthy or sickly, tractable or rebellious? Speak out, man,’ retorted Ralph. ‘Why, he wasn’t young,’ answered Squeers; ‘that is, not young for a boy, you know.’ ‘That is, he was not a boy at all, I suppose?’ interrupted Ralph. ‘Well,’ returned Squeers, briskly, as if he felt relieved by the suggestion, ‘he might have been nigh twenty. He wouldn’t seem so old, though, to them as didn’t know him, for he was a little wanting here,’ touching his forehead; ‘nobody at home, you know, if you knocked ever so often.’ ‘And you did knock pretty often, I dare say?’ muttered Ralph. ‘Pretty well,’ returned Squeers with a grin. ‘When you wrote to acknowledge the receipt of this trifle of money as you call it,’ said Ralph, ‘you told me his friends had deserted him long ago, and that you had not the faintest clue or trace to tell you who he was. Is that the truth?’ ‘It is, worse luck!’ replied Squeers, becoming more and more easy and familiar in his manner, as Ralph pursued his inquiries with the less reserve. ‘It’s fourteen years ago, by the entry in my book, since a strange man brought him to my place, one autumn night, and left him there; paying five pound five, for his first quarter in advance. He might have been five or six year old at that time--not more.’ |
