第20章

`Mighty fine certainly,' said Ralph, with great testiness. `When I first went to business, ma'am, I took a penny loaf and a ha'porth of milk for my breakfast as I walked to the City every morning; what do you say to that, ma'am? Breakfast! Bah!'

`Now, Nickleby,' said Squeers, coming up at the moment buttoning his greatcoat; `I think you'd better get up behind. I'm afraid of one of them boys falling off and then there's twenty pound a year gone.'

`Dear Nicholas,' whispered Kate, touching her brother's arm, `who is that vulgar man?'

`Eh!' growled Ralph, whose quick ears had caught the inquiry. `Do you wish to be introduced to Mr Squeers, my dear?'

`That the schoolmaster! No, uncle. Oh no!' replied Kate, shrinking back.

`I'm sure I heard you say as much, my dear,' retorted Ralph in his cold sarcastic manner. `Mr Squeers, here's my niece: Nicholas's sister!'

`Very glad to make your acquaintance, miss,' said Squeers, raising his hat an inch or two. `I wish Mrs Squeers took gals, and we had you for a teacher. I don't know, though, whether she mightn't grow jealous if we had. Ha! ha! ha!'

If the proprietor of Dotheboys Hall could have known what was passing in his assistant's breast at that moment, he would have discovered, with some surprise, that he was as near being soundly pummelled as he had ever been in his life. Kate Nickleby, having a quicker perception of her brother's emotions, led him gently aside, and thus prevented Mr Squeers from being impressed with the fact in a peculiarly disagreeable manner.

`My dear Nicholas,' said the young lady, `who is this man? What kind of place can it be that you are going to?'

`I hardly know, Kate,' replied Nicholas, pressing his sister's hand.

`I suppose the Yorkshire folks are rather rough and uncultivated; that's all.'

`But this person,' urged Kate.

`Is my employer, or master, or whatever the proper name may be,' replied Nicholas quickly; `and I was an ass to take his coarseness ill. They are looking this way, and it is time I was in my place. Bless you, love, and goodbye! Mother, look forward to our meeting again someday! Uncle, farewell!

Thank you heartily for all you have done and all you mean to do. Quite ready, sir!'

With these hasty adieux, Nicholas mounted nimbly to his seat, and waved his hand as gallantly as if his heart went with it.

At this moment, when the coachman and guard were comparing notes for the last time before starting, on the subject of the way-bill; when porters were screwing out the last reluctant sixpences, itinerant newsmen making the last offer of a morning paper, and the horses giving the last impatient rattle to their harness; Nicholas felt somebody pulling softly at his leg.

He looked down, and there stood Newman Noggs, who pushed up into his hand a dirty letter.

`What's this?' inquired Nicholas.

`Hush!' rejoined Noggs, pointing to Mr Ralph Nickleby, who was saying a few earnest words to Squeers, a short distance off: `Take it. Read it.

Nobody knows. That's all.'

`Stop!' cried Nicholas.

`No,' replied Noggs.

Nicholas cried stop, again, but Newman Noggs was gone.

A minute's bustle, a banging of the coach doors, a swaying of the vehicle to one side, as the heavy coachman, and still heavier guard, climbed into their seats; a cry of all right, a few notes from the horn, a hasty glance of two sorrowful faces below, and the hard features of Mr Ralph Nickleby -- and the coach was gone too, and rattling over the stones of Smithfield.

The little boys' legs being too short to admit of their feet resting upon anything as they sat, and the little boys' bodies being consequently in imminent hazard of being jerked off the coach, Nicholas had enough to do over the stones to hold them on. Between the manual exertion and the mental anxiety attendant upon this task, he was not a little relieved when the coach stopped at the Peacock at Islington. He was still more relieved when a hearty-looking gentleman, with a very good-humoured face, and a very fresh colour, got up behind, and proposed to take the other corner of the seat.

`If we put some of these youngsters in the middle,' said the new-comer, `they'll be safer in case of their going to sleep; eh?'

`If you'll have the goodness, sir,' replied Squeers, `that'll be the very thing. Mr Nickleby, take three of them boys between you and the gentleman.

Belling and the youngest Snawley can sit between me and the guard. Three children,' said Squeers, explaining to the stranger, `books as two.'

`I have not the least objection I am sure,' said the fresh-coloured gentleman; `I have a brother who wouldn't object to book his six children as two at any butcher's or baker's in the kingdom, I dare say. Far from it.'

`Six children, sir?' exclaimed Squeers.

`Yes, and all boys,' replied the stranger.

`Mr Nickleby,' said Squeers, in great haste, `catch hold of that basket.

Let me give you a card, sir, of an establishment where those six boys can be brought up in an enlightened, liberal, and moral manner, with no mistake at all about it, for twenty guineas a year each -- twenty guineas, sir -- or I'd take all the boys together upon a average right through, and say a hundred pound a year for the lot.'

`Oh!' said the gentleman, glancing at the card, `you are the Mr Squeers mentioned here, I presume?'

`Yes, I am, sir,' replied the worthy pedagogue; `Mr Wackford Squeers is my name, and I'm very far from being ashamed of it. These are some of my boys, sir; that's one of my assistants, sir -- Mr Nickleby, a gentleman's son, amd a good scholar, mathematical, classical, and commercial. We don't do things by halves at our shop. All manner of learning my boys take down, sir; the expense is never thought of; and they get paternal treatment and washing in.'

`Upon my word,' said the gentleman, glancing at Nicholas with a half-smile, and a more than half expression of surprise, `these are advantages indeed.'