Part 9 (2/2)

'I am not cold,' replied Smike quickly 'I a offence in his manner, and he was such a timid, broken-spirited creature, that Nicholas could not help exclaie, he would have slunk aithout a word But, now, he burst into tears

'Oh dear, oh dear!' he cried, covering his face with his cracked and horny hands 'My heart will break It will, it will'

'Hush!+' said Nicholas, laying his hand upon his shoulder 'Be a man; you are nearly one by years, God help you'

'By years!' cried Smike 'Oh dear, dear, how many of theer than any that are here now! Where are they all!'

'Who to rouse the poor half-witted creature to reason 'Tell me'

'My friends,' he replied, 's mine have been!'

'There is always hope,' said Nicholas; he knew not what to say

'No,' rejoined the other, 'no; none for me Do you remember the boy that died here?'

'I was not here, you know,' said Nicholas gently; 'but what of hi closer to his questioner's side, 'I ith hiht, and when it was all silent he cried no an to see faces round his bed that came from home; he said they s his head to kiss them Do you hear?'

'Yes, yes,' rejoined Nicholas

'What faces will s 'Who will talk to hts! They cannot cohten me, if they did, for I don't knohat it is, and shouldn't know them Pain and fear, pain and fear forto bed: and the boy, subsiding at the sound into his usual listless state, crept away as if anxious to avoid notice It ith a heavy heart that Nicholas soon afterwards-no, not retired; there was no retirement there-followed-to his dirty and crowded dormitory

CHAPTER 9

Of Miss Squeers, Mrs Squeers, Master Squeers, and Mr Squeers; and of various Matters and Persons connected no less with the Squeerses than Nicholas Nickleby When Mr Squeers left the schoolrooht, he betook himself, as has been before remarked, to his own fireside, which was situated-not in the rooht of his arrival, but in a smaller apartment in the rear of the premises, where his lady wife, his ahter, were in the full enjoyed in the entle occupied in the adjustilistic contest across the table, which, on the approach of their honoured parent, subsided into a noiseless exchange of kicks beneath it

And, in this place, it may be as well to apprise the reader, that Miss fanny Squeers was in her three-and-twentieth year If there be any one grace or loveliness inseparable from that particular period of life, Miss Squeers may be presumed to have been possessed of it, as there is no reason to suppose that she was a solitary exception to an universal rule She was not tall like her mother, but short like her father; from the former she inherited a voice of harsh quality; froht eye, so none at all

Miss Squeers had been spending a few days with a neighbouring friend, and had only just returned to the parental roof To this circu of Nicholas, until Mr Squeers himself now made him the subject of conversation

'Well,up his chair, 'what do you think of him by this time?'

'Think of who?' inquired Mrs Squeers; who (as she often re man-the new teacher-who else could I mean?'

'Oh! that Knuckleboy,' said Mrs Squeers impatiently 'I hate him'

'What do you hate him for, my dear?' asked Squeers

'What's that to you?' retorted Mrs Squeers 'If I hate hih for hireat deal too much I dare say, if he knew it,' replied Squeers in a pacific tone 'I only ask from curiosity, my dear'

'Well, then, if you want to know,' rejoined Mrs Squeers, 'I'll tell you Because he's a proud, haughty, consequential, turned-up-nosed peacock'

Mrs Squeers, when excited, was accustoe, and, moreover, to make use of a plurality of epithets, sourative kind, as the word peacock, and furthermore the allusion to Nicholas's nose, which was not intended to be taken in its literal sense, but rather to bear a latitude of construction according to the fancy of the hearers

Neither were they meant to bear reference to each other, so much as to the object on whom they were bestowed, as will be seen in the present case: a peacock with a turned-up nose being a novelty in ornithology, and a thing not commonly seen

'Hem!' said Squeers, as if in mild deprecation of this outbreak 'He is cheap,man is very cheap'

'Not a bit of it,' retorted Mrs Squeers

'Five pound a year,' said Squeers

'What of that; it's dear if you don't want him, isn't it?' replied his wife

'But we DO want hied Squeers

'I don't see that you want him any more than the dead,' said Mrs Squeers 'Don't tell me You can put on the cards and in the advertisements, ”Education by Mr Wackford Squeers and able assistants,” without having any assistants, can't you? Isn't it done every day by all the masters about? I've no patience with you'

'Haven't you!' said Squeers, sternly 'Now I'll tell you what, Mrs Squeers In thisa teacher, I'll take my oay, if you please A slave driver in the West Indies is allowed a et up a rebellion; and I'll have a man under me to do the same with OUR blacks, till such tie of the school'

'Arow up a , in the excess of his delight, a vicious kick which he was ad to his sister

'You are, my son,' replied Mr Squeers, in a sentiive it to the boys!' exclai his father's cane 'Oh, father, won't I ain!'

It was a proud moment in Mr Squeers's life, when he witnessed that burst of enthusias of his future eave vent to his feelings (as did his exehter The infantine appeal to their common sympathies, at once restored cheerfulness to the conversation, and harmony to the company

'He's a nasty stuck-up monkey, that's what I consider hi he is,' said Squeers, 'he is as well stuck up in our schoolroom as anywhere else, isn't he?-especially as he don't like it'

'Well,' observed Mrs Squeers, 'there's so his pride down, and it shall be no fault of mine if it don't'

Now, a proud usher in a Yorkshi+re school was such a very extraordinary and unaccountable thing to hear of,-any usher at all being a novelty; but a proud one, a being of whose existence the wildest iination could never have dreamed-that Miss Squeers, who seldom troubled herself with scholastic matters, inquired with ave hi the na to some eccentric system which prevailed in his own s and people by their wrong names'

'No ht eyes, and that's quite enough foron to little Bolder this afternoon He looked as black as thunder, all the while, and, one tiot it in his ht I didn't'

'Never mind that, father,' said Miss Squeers, as the head of the family was about to reply 'Who is the man?'