Ярмарка тщеславия / Vanity Fair

“Well, sir, will you go?” crowed the cock of the school.

“Put down the letter,” Dobbin replied.

“Well, NOW will you go?” says the other.

“No, I won’t. Don’t strike, or I’ll THMASH you,” roared out Dobbin, looking so wicked, that Mr. Cuff paused, turned down his coat sleeves again, put his hands into his pockets, and walked away with a sneer. But he never meddled personally with the grocer’s boy after that.

Some time after this interview, it happened that Mr. Cuff, on a sunshiny afternoon, was in the neighbourhood of poor William Dobbin, who was lying under a tree in the playground.

Well, William Dobbin had for once forgotten the world, and was away with Sindbad the Sailor in the Valley of Diamonds, when shrill cries, as of a little fellow weeping; and looking up, he saw Cuff before him, fighting a little boy.

It was the lad who had peached upon him about the grocer’s cart; but he bore little malice,[9 - не держал зла] not at least towards the young and small.

“Hold off, Cuff; don’t bully that child any more; or I’ll – ”

“Or you’ll what?” Cuff asked in amazement at this interruption. “Hold out your hand, you little beast.”

“I’ll give you the worst thrashing you ever had in your life,” Dobbin said, in reply to the first part of Cuff’s sentence; and little Osborne, gasping and in tears, looked up with wonder at seeing this amazing champion put up suddenly to defend him: while Cuff’s astonishment was scarcely less.

“After school,” says he, of course; after a pause and a look, as much as to say, “Make your will, and communicate your last wishes to your friends between this time and that.”

“As you please,” Dobbin said. “You must be my bottle holder, Osborne.”

“Well, if you like,” little Osborne replied.

When the hour of battle came, he was almost ashamed to say, “Go it, Figs”; and not a single other boy in the place cried that for the first two or three rounds of this famous combat.

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