Page:Nicholas Nickleby.djvu/109

Rh 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 a universal rule. She was not tall like her mother, but short like her father; from the former she inherited a voice of harsh quality, and from the latter a remarkable expression of the right eye, something akin to having 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 circumstance may be referred her having heard nothing of Nicholas, until Mr. Squeers himself now made him the subject of conversation.

"Well, my dear," said Squeers, drawing up his chair, "what do you think of him by this time?" "Think of who?" inquired Mrs. Squeers; who (as she often remarked) was no grammarian, thank God. "Of the young 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 him that's enough, ain't it?"

"Quite enough for him, my dear, and a great deal too much I dare say, if he knew it," replied Squeers in a pacific tone. "I only asked 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 accustomed to use strong language, and moreover to make use of a plurality of epithets, some of which were of a figurative 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, my dear; the young 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 him," urged 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 this matter of having a teacher, I'll take my own way, if you please. A slave driver in the West Indies is allowed a man