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331 "N—n—no, I don't know that," replied Squeers. "I thought that if it was in your power to make me, besides the trifle of money you sent, any compensation——"

"Ah!" cried Ralph, interrupting him. "You needn't go on."

After a long pause, during which Ralph appeared absorbed in contemplation, he again broke silence, by asking—

"Who is this boy that he took with him?"

Squeers stated his name. "Was he young or old, healthy or sickly, tractable or rebellious? Speak out, man," retorted Ralph quickly.

"Why, he wasn't young," answered Squeers; "that is, not young for a boy you know."

"That is, that he was not a boy at all, I suppose?" interrupted Ralph.

"Well," returned Squeers briskly, as if he felt relieved by the suggestion, "he might have been nigh twenty. He wouldn't seem so old though to them as didn't know him, for he was a little wanting here," touching his forehead, "nobody at home you know, if you knocked ever so often."

"And you did knock pretty often, I dare say ? " muttered Ralph. "Pretty well," returned Squeers with a grin.

"When you wrote to acknowledge the receipt of this trifle of money as you call it," said Ralph, "you told me his friends had deserted him long ago, and that you had not the faintest clue or trace to tell you who he was. Is that the truth?"

"It is; worse luck!" replied Squeers, becoming more and more easy and familiar in his manner, as Ralph pursued his enquiries with the less reserve. "It's fourteen year ago, by the entry in my book, since a strange man brought him to my place one autumn night, and left him there, paying five pound five, for his first quarter in advance. He might have been five or six year old at that time—not more."

"What more do you know about him?" demanded Ralph.

"Devilish little, I'm sorry to say," replied Squeers. "The money was paid for some six or eight year, and then it stopped. He had given an address in London, had this chap; but when it came to the point, of course nobody knowed anything about him. So I kept the lad out of—out of—"

"Charity?" suggested Ralph drily.

"Charity, to be sure," returned Squeers, rubbing his knees, "and when he begins to be useful in a certain sort of a way, this young scoundrel of a Nickleby comes and carries him off." But the most vexatious and aggeravating part of the whole affair is," said Squeers, dropping his voice, and drawing his chair still closer to Ralph, "that some questions have been asked about him at last—not of me, but in a round-about kind of way of people in our village. So, that just when I might have had all arrears paid up, perhaps, and perhaps—who knows? such things have happened in our business before—a present besides for putting him out to a farmer or sending him to sea, so that he might never turn up to disgrace his parents, supposing him to be a natural