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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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915 like your poor papa. However, I have my consolation, and that should be enough for me!’ Washing her hands, thus, of all responsibility under this head, past, present, or to come, Mrs Nickleby kindly added that she hoped her children might never have greater cause to reproach themselves than she had, and prepared herself to receive the escort, who soon returned with the intelligence that the old gentleman was safely housed, and that they found his custodians, who had been making merry with some friends, wholly ignorant of his absence. Quiet being again restored, a delicious half-hour--so Frank called it, in the course of subsequent conversation with Tim Linkinwater as they were walking home--was spent in conversation, and Tim’s watch at length apprising him that it was high time to depart, the ladies were left alone, though not without many offers on the part of Frank to remain until Nicholas arrived, no matter what hour of the night it might be, if, after the late neighbourly irruption, they entertained the least fear of being left to themselves. As their freedom from all further apprehension, however, left no pretext for his insisting on mounting guard, he was obliged to abandon the citadel, and to retire with the trusty Tim. Nearly three hours of silence passed away. Kate blushed to find, when Nicholas returned, how long she had been sitting alone, occupied with her own thoughts. ‘I really thought it had not been half an hour,’ she said. ‘They must have been pleasant thoughts, Kate,’ rejoined Nicholas gaily, ‘to make time pass away like that. What were they now?’ |
