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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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902 was here--last Tuesday night he went off in just the same strange way, at the very moment the knock came to the door. It cannot be that he don’t like company, because he is always fond of people who are fond of Nicholas, and I am sure young Mr Cheeryble is. And the strangest thing is, that he does not go to bed; therefore it cannot be because he is tired. I know he doesn’t go to bed, because my room is the next one, and when I went upstairs last Tuesday, hours after him, I found that he had not even taken his shoes off; and he had no candle, so he must have sat moping in the dark all the time. Now, upon my word,’ said Mrs Nickleby, ‘when I come to think of it, that’s very extraordinary!’ As the hearers did not echo this sentiment, but remained profoundly silent, either as not knowing what to say, or as being unwilling to interrupt, Mrs Nickleby pursued the thread of her discourse after her own fashion. ‘I hope,’ said that lady, ‘that this unaccountable conduct may not be the beginning of his taking to his bed and living there all his life, like the Thirsty Woman of Tutbury, or the Cock-lane Ghost, or some of those extraordinary creatures. One of them had some connection with our family. I forget, without looking back to some old letters I have upstairs, whether it was my great-grandfather who went to school with the Cock-lane Ghost, or the Thirsty Woman of Tutbury who went to school with my grandmother. Miss La Creevy, you know, of course. Which was it that didn’t mind what the clergyman said? The Cock-lane Ghost or the Thirsty Woman of Tutbury?’ ‘The Cock-lane Ghost, I believe.’ ‘Then I have no doubt,’ said Mrs Nickleby, ‘that it was with him my great-grandfather went to school; for I know the master of his |
