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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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278 head; and then she poured out further frantic entreaties that I would burn them--do anything rather than show them. And being really fully as inclined to laugh as scold, for I esteemed it all girlish vanity, I at length relented in a measure, and asked-- “If I consent to burn them, will you promise faithfully, neither to send nor receive a letter again, nor a book (for I perceive you have sent him books), nor locks of hair, nor rings, nor playthings?” “We don’t send playthings!” cried Catherine, her pride overcoming her shame. “Nor any thing at all, then, my lady!” I said. “Unless you will, here I go.” “I promise, Ellen!” she cried, catching my dress. “Oh, put them in the fire, do, do!” But when I proceeded to open a place with the poker, the sacrifice was too painful to be borne. She earnestly supplicated that I would spare her one or two. “One or two, Ellen, to keep for Linton’s sake!” I unknotted the handkerchief, and commenced dropping them in from an angle, and the flame curled up the chimney. “I will have one, you cruel wretch!” she screamed, darting her hand into the fire, and drawing forth some half-consumed fragments, at the expense of her fingers. “Very well--and I will have some to exhibit to Papa!” I answered, shaking back the rest into the bundle, and turning anew to the door. She emptied her blackened pieces into the flames, and motioned me to finish the immolation. It was done; I stirred up the ashes, and interred them under a shovelful of coals; and she mutely, and with a sense of intense injury, retired to her private |
