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336 the day before yesterday now; I should have said, perhaps, the year before last—we should have been better able to entertain him."

With which remarks Mrs. Nickleby turned to her daughter, and inquired, in an audible whisper, whether the gentleman was going to stop all night.

"Because if he is, Kate, my dear," said Mrs. Nickleby, "I don't see that it's possible for him to sleep anywhere, and that's the truth."

Kate stepped gracefully forward, and without any show of annoyance or irritation, breathed a few words into her mother's ear.

"La, Kate, my dear," said Mrs. Nickleby, shrinking back, " how you do tickle one. Of course, I understand that my love, without your telling me; and I said the same to Nicholas, and I am very much pleased. You didn't tell me, Nicholas, my dear," added ^Mrs. Nickleby, turning round with an air of less reserve than she had before assumed, "what your friend's name is."

"His name, mother," replied Nicholas, "is Smike."

The effect of this communication was by no means anticipated; but the name was no sooner pronounced, than Mrs. Nickleby dropped upon a chair, and burst into a fit of crying.

"What is the matter?" exclaimed Nicholas, running to support her.

"It's so like Pyke," cried Mrs. Nickleby; "so exactly like Pyke, that's all. Oh! don't speak to me—I shall be better presently."

And after exhibiting every symptom of slow suffocation, in all its stages, and drinking about a tea-spoonful of water from a full tumbler, and spilling the remainder, Mrs. Nickleby was better, and remarked, with a feeble smile, that she was very foolish, she knew.

"It's a weakness in our family," said Mrs. Nickleby, "so, of course, I can't be blamed for it. Your grandmama, Kate, was exactly the same—precisely. The least excitement, the slightest surprise, she fainted away directly. I have heard her say, often and often, that when she was a young lady, and before she was married, she was turning a corner into Oxford-street one day, when she ran against her own hair-dresser, who, it seems, was escaping from a bear;—the mere suddenness of the encounter made her faint away directly. Wait, though," added Mrs. Nickleby, pausing to consider, "Let me be sure I'm right. Was it her hair-dresser who had escaped from a bear, or was it a bear who had escaped from her hair-dresser's? I declare I can't remember just now, but the hair-dresser was a very handsome man, I know, and quite a gentleman in his manners; so that it has nothing to do with the point of the story."

Mrs. Nickleby having fallen imperceptibly into one of her retrospective moods, improved in temper from that moment, and glided, by an easy change of the conversation occasionally, into various other anecdotes, no less remarkable for their strict application to the subject in hand.

"Mr. Smike is from Yorkshire, Nicholas, my dear?" said Mrs. Nickleby, after dinner, and when she had been silent for some time.

"Certainly, mother," replied Nicholas. "I see you have not forgotten his melancholy history."