In the first place, he is no robber at all," returned Ralph, positively.
A description of him was easily procured and sent to the detectives; and some hopeful spirits, of whom Ralph was one, did not despair of his apprehension.
But the incredulous Stuart was not convinced, and when the hand was finished, said eagerly: "You have a strange way, Ralph, of proving that the world has grown smaller.
Stuart, Fallentin, Sullivan, Flanagan, and Ralph, after consulting each other.
She was older than Ralph by some three or four years.
She sighed involuntarily, and the sigh annoyed Ralph, and he exclaimed with irritation:
Neither brother nor sister spoke with much conviction, and after reflecting for a moment what these proposed reforms in a strictly economical household meant, Ralph announced very decidedly:
In the course of his professional life, which now extended over six or seven years, Ralph had saved, perhaps, three or four hundred pounds.
I'll play, with pleasure, Geraldine," he assented, "but I want to have a word with Ralph first.
I told Ralph," Geraldine said, looking up, "that you wanted to speak to him, but he and Olive have gone off somewhere.
Ralph, with a sheet of paper stretched out before him and a pencil in his hand, was apparently sketching something.
Sometimes, when the leopards seemed better natured,
Ralph even encouraged the two dogs to lie down.
And,' reasoned Ralph with himself, 'if no good came of my uncle's money when he was alive, a great deal of good came of it after he was dead, inasmuch as my father has got it now, and is saving it up for me, which is a highly virtuous purpose; and, going back to the old gentleman, good DID come of it to him too, for he had the pleasure of thinking of it all his life long, and of being envied and courted by all his family besides.
In like manner, did young Ralph Nickleby avoid all those minute and intricate calculations of odd days, which nobody who has worked sums in simple-interest can fail to have found most embarrassing, by establishing the one general rule that all sums of principal and interest should be paid on pocket-money day, that is to say, on Saturday: and that whether a loan were contracted on the Monday, or on the Friday, the amount of interest should be, in both cases, the same.
On the death of his father, Ralph Nickleby, who had been some time before placed in a mercantile house in London, applied himself passionately to his old pursuit of money-getting, in which he speedily became so buried and absorbed, that he quite forgot his brother for many years; and if, at times, a recollection of his old playfellow broke upon him through the haze in which he lived--for gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal--it brought along with it a companion thought, that if they were intimate he would want to borrow money of him.
