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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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745 speaking. At last, they halted and confronted each other with blank and rueful faces. ‘Never mind,’ said Newman, gasping for breath. ‘Don’t be cast down. It’s all right. More fortunate next time. It couldn’t be helped. I did my part.’ ‘Excellently,’ replied Nicholas, taking his hand. ‘Excellently, and like the true and zealous friend you are. Only--mind, I am not disappointed, Newman, and feel just as much indebted to you-- only it was the wrong lady.’ ‘Eh?’ cried Newman Noggs. ‘Taken in by the servant?’ ‘Newman, Newman,’ said Nicholas, laying his hand upon his shoulder: ‘it was the wrong servant too.’ Newman’s under-jaw dropped, and he gazed at Nicholas, with his sound eye fixed fast and motionless in his head. ‘Don’t take it to heart,’ said Nicholas; ‘it’s of no consequence; you see I don’t care about it; you followed the wrong person, that’s all.’ That was all. Whether Newman Noggs had looked round the pump, in a slanting direction, so long, that his sight became impaired; or whether, finding that there was time to spare, he had recruited himself with a few drops of something stronger than the pump could yield--by whatsoever means it had come to pass, this was his mistake. And Nicholas went home to brood upon it, and to meditate upon the charms of the unknown young lady, now as far beyond his reach as ever. |
