第176章

`You are the demdest, knowing hand,' replied Mr Mantalini, in an admiring tone, `the cunningest, rummest, superlativest old fox--oh dem!--to pretend now not to know that it was the little bright-eyed niece--the softest, sweetest, prettiest--'

`Alfred!' interposed Madame Mantalini.

`She is always right,' rejoined Mr Mantalini soothingly, `and when she says it is time to go, it is time, and go she shall; and when she walks along the streets with her own tulip, the women shall say, with envy, she has got a demd fine husband; and the men shall say with rapture, he has got a demd fine wife; and they shall both be right and neither wrong, upon my life and soul--oh demmit!'

With which remarks, and many more, no less intellectual and to the purpose, Mr Mantalini kissed the fingers of his gloves to Ralph Nickleby, and drawing his lady's arm through his, led her mincingly away.

`So, so,' muttered Ralph, dropping into his chair; `this devil is loose again, and thwarting me, as he was born to do, at every turn. He told me once there should be a day of reckoning between us, sooner or later. I'll make him a true prophet, for it shall surely come.'

`Are you at home?' asked Newman, suddenly popping in his head.

`No,' replied Ralph, with equal abruptness.

Newman withdrew his head, but thrust it in again.

`You're quite sure you're not at home, are you?' said Newman.

`What does the idiot mean?' cried Ralph, testily.

`He has been waiting nearly ever since they first came in, and may have heard your voice--that's all,' said Newman, rubbing his hands.

`Who has?' demanded Ralph, wrought by the intelligence he had just heard, and his clerk's provoking coolness, to an intense pitch of irritation.

The necessity of a reply was superseded by the unlooked-for entrance of a third party--the individual in question--who, bringing his one eye (for he had but one) to bear on Ralph Nickleby, made a great many shambling bows, and sat himself down in an armchair, with his hands on his knees, and his short black trousers drawn up so high in the legs by the exertion of seating himself, that they scarcely reached below the tops of his Wellington boots.'

`Why, this is a surprise!' said Ralph, bending his gaze upon the visitor, and half smiling as he scrutinised him attentively; `I should know your face, Mr Squeers.'

`Ah!' replied that worthy, `and you'd have know'd it better, sir, if it hadn't been for all that I've been a-going through. Just lift that little boy off the tall stool in the back-office, and tell him to come in here, will you, my man?' said Squeers, addressing himself to Newman. `Oh, he's lifted hisself off. My son, sir, little Wackford. What do you think of him, sir, for a specimen of the Dotheboys Hall feeding? ain't he fit to bust out of his clothes, and start the seams, and make the very buttons fly off with his fatness? Here's flesh!' cried Squeers, turning the boy about, and indenting the plumpest parts of his figure with divers pokes and punches, to the great discomposure of his son and heir. `Here's firmness, here's solidness! why you can hardly get up enough of him between your finger and thumb to pinch him anywheres.'

In however good condition Master Squeers might have been, he certainly did not present this remarkable compactness of person, for on his father's closing his finger and thumb in illustration of his remark, he uttered a sharp cry, and rubbed the place in the most natural manner possible.

`Well,' remarked Squeers, a little disconcerted, `I had him there; but that's because we breakfasted early this morning, and he hasn't had his lunch yet. Why you couldn't shut a bit of him in a door, when he's had his dinner. Look at them tears, sir,' said Squeers, with a triumphant air, as Master Wackford wiped his eyes with the cuff of his jacket, `there's oiliness!'

`He looks well, indeed,' returned Ralph, who, for some purposes of his own, seemed desirous to conciliate the schoolmaster. `But how is Mrs Squeers, and how are you?'

`Mrs Squeers, sir,' replied the proprietor of Dotheboys, `is as she always is--a mother to them lads, and a blessing, and a comfort, and a joy to all them as knows her. One of our boys--gorging his-self with vittles, and then turning in; that's their way--got a abscess on him last week.

To see how she operated upon him with a penknife! Oh Lor!' said Squeers, heaving a sigh, and nodding his head a great many times, `what a member of society that woman is!'

Mr Squeers indulged in a retrospective look, for some quarter of a minute, as if this allusion to his lady's excellences had naturally led his mind to the peaceful village of Dotheboys near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire; and then looked at Ralph, as if waiting for him to say something.

`Have you quite recovered that scoundrel's attack?' asked Ralph.

`I've only just done it, if I've done it now,' replied Squeers. `I was one blessed bruise, sir,' said Squeers, touching first the roots of his hair, and then the toes of his boots, `from here to there .

Vinegar and brown paper, vinegar and brown paper, from morning to night.

I suppose there was a matter of half a ream of brown paper stuck upon me, from first to last. As I laid all of a heap in our kitchen, plastered all over, you might have thought I was a large brown-paper parcel, chock full of nothing but groans. Did I groan loud, Wackford, or did I groan soft?'

asked Mr Squeers, appealing to his son.

`Loud,' replied Wackford.

`Was the boys sorry to see me in such a dreadful condition, Wackford, or was they glad?' asked Mr Squeers, in a sentimental manner.

`Gl--'

`Eh?' cried Squeers, turning sharp round.

`Sorry,' rejoined his son.

`Oh!' said Squeers, catching him a smart box on the ear. `Then take your hands out of your pockets, and don't stammer when you're asked a question.

Hold your noise, sir, in a gentleman's office, or I'll run away from my family and never come back any more; and then what would become of all them precious and forlorn lads as would be let loose on the world, without their best friend at their elbers?'