"Dickens, Charles - The Old Curiosity Shop" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickens Charles)

entering, and the old man advancing hastily towards me, said in a
tremulous tone that he was very glad I had come.

'You interrupted us at a critical moment,' said he, pointing to the
man whom I had found in company with him; 'this fellow will
murder me one of these days. He would have done so, long ago, if
he had dared.'

'Bah! You would swear away my life if you could,' returned the
other, after bestowing a stare and a frown on me; 'we all know that!'

'I almost think I could,' cried the old man, turning feebly upon him.
'If oaths, or prayers, or words, could rid me of you, they should. I
would be quit of you, and would be relieved if you were dead.'

'I know it,' returned the other. 'I said so, didn't I? But neither oaths,
or prayers, nor words, WILL kill me, and therefore I live, and mean
to live.'

'And his mother died!' cried the old man, passionately clasping his
hands and looking upward; 'and this is Heaven's justice!'

The other stood lunging with his foot upon a chair, and regarded him
with a contemptuous sneer. He was a young man of one-and-twenty
or thereabouts; well made, and certainly handsome, though the
expression of his face was far from prepossessing, having in
common with his manner and even his dress, a dissipated, insolent
air which repelled one.

'Justice or no justice,' said the young fellow, 'here I am and here I
shall stop till such time as I think fit to go, unless you send for
assistance to put me out--which you won't do, I know. I tell you
again that I want to see my sister.'

'YOUR sister!' said the old man bitterly.

'Ah! You can't change the relationship,' returned the other. 'If you
could, you'd have done it long ago. I want to see my sister, that you
keep cooped up here, poisoning her mind with your sly secrets and
pretending an affection for her that you may work her to death, and
add a few scraped shillings every week to the money you can hardly
count. I want to see her; and I will.'

'Here's a moralist to talk of poisoned minds! Here's a generous spirit
to scorn scraped-up shillings!' cried the old man, turning from him
to me. 'A profligate, sir, who has forfeited every claim not only
upon those who have the misfortune to be of his blood, but upon
society which knows nothing of him but his misdeeds. A liar too,' he
added, in a lower voice as he drew closer to me, 'who knows how
dear she is to me, and seeks to wound me even there, because there