第205章

To have seen Miss Squeers now, divested of the brown beaver, the green veil, and the blue curl-papers, and arrayed in all the virgin splendour of a white frock and spencer, with a white muslin bonnet, and an imitative damask rose in full bloom on the inside thereof: her luxuriant crop of hair arranged in curls so tight that it was impossible they could come out by any accident, and her bonnet-cap trimmed with little damask roses, which might be supposed to be so many promising scions of the big one --to have seen all this, and to have seen the broad damask belt, matching both the family rose and the little ones, which encircled her slender waist, and by a happy ingenuity took off from the shortness of the spencer behind, -- to have beheld all this, and to have taken further into account the coral bracelets (rather short of beads, and with a very visible black string)which clasped her wrists, and the coral necklace which rested on her neck, supporting, outside her frock, a lonely cornelian heart, typical of her own disengaged affections -- to have contemplated all these mute but expressive appeals to the purest feelings of our nature, might have thawed the frost of age, and added new and inextinguishable fuel to the fire of youth.

The waiter was touched. Waiter as he was, he had human passions and feelings, and he looked very hard at Miss Squeers as he handed the muffins.

`Is my pa in, do you know?' asked Miss Squeers with dignity.

`Beg your pardon, miss?'

`My pa,' repeated Miss Squeers; `is he in?'

`In where, miss?'

`In here -- in the house!' replied Miss Squeers. `My pa -- Mr Wackford Squeers -- he's stopping here. Is he at home?'

`I didn't know there was any gen'l'man of that name in the house, miss'

replied the waiter. `There may be, in the coffee-room.'

May be . Very pretty this, indeed! Here was Miss Squeers, who had been depending, all the way to London, upon showing her friends how much at home she would be, and how much respectful notice her name and connections would excite, told that her father might be there! `As if he was a feller!' observed Miss Squeers, with emphatic indignation.

`Ye'd betther inquire, mun,' said John Browdie. `An' hond up another pigeon-pie, will 'ee? Dang the chap,' muttered John, looking into the empty dish as the waiter retired; `does he ca' this a pie -- three yoong pigeons and a troifling matther o' steak, and a crust so loight that you doant know when it's in your mooth and when it's gane? I wonder hoo many pies goes to a breakfast!'

After a short interval, which John Browdie employed upon the ham and a cold round of beef, the waiter returned with another pie, and the information that Mr Squeers was not stopping in the house, but that he came there every day and that directly he arrived, he should be shown upstairs. With this, he retired; and he had not retired two minutes, when he returned with Mr Squeers and his hopeful son.

`Why, who'd have thought of this?' said Mr Squeers, when he had saluted the party and received some private family intelligence from his daughter.

`Who, indeed, pa!' replied that young lady, spitefully. `But you see 'Tilda is married at last.'

`And I stond threat for a soight o' Lunnun, schoolmeasther,' said John, vigorously attacking the pie.

`One of them things that young men do when they get married,' returned Squeers; `and as runs through with their money like nothing at all! How much better wouldn't it be now, to save it up for the eddication of any little boys, for instance! They come on you,' said Mr Squeers in a moralising way, `before you're aware of it; mine did upon me.'

`Will 'ee pick a bit?' said John.

`I won't myself,' returned Squeers; `but if you'll just let little Wackford tuck into something fat, I'll be obliged to you. Give it him in his fingers, else the waiter charges it on, and there's lot of profit on this sort of vittles without that. If you hear the waiter coming, sir, shove it in your pocket and look out of the window, d'ye hear?'

`I'm awake, father,' replied the dutiful Wackford.

`Well,' said Squeers, turning to his daughter, `it's your turn to be married next. You must make haste.'

`Oh, I'm in no hurry,' said Miss Squeers, very sharply.

`No, Fanny?' cried her old friend with some archness.

`No, 'Tilda,' replied Miss Squeers, shaking her head vehemently. ` I can wait.'

`So can the young men, it seems, Fanny,' observed Mrs Browdie.

`They an't draw'd into it by me , 'Tilda,' retorted Miss Squeers.

`No,' returned her friend; `that's exceedingly true.'

The sarcastic tone of this reply might have provoked a rather acrimonious retort from Miss Squeers, who, besides being of a constitutionally vicious temper -- aggravated, just now, by travel and recent jolting -- was somewhat irritated by old recollections and the failure of her own designs upon Mr Browdie; and the acrimonious retort might have led to a great many other retorts, which might have led to Heaven knows what, if the subject of conversation had not been, at that precise moment, accidentally changed by Mr Squeers himself `What do you think?' said that gentleman; `who do you suppose we have laid hands on, Wackford and me?'

`Pa! not Mr --?' Miss Squeers was unable to finish the sentence, but Mrs Browdie did it for her, and added, `Nickleby?'

`No,' said Squeers. `But next door to him though.'

`You can't mean Smike?' cried Miss Squeers, clapping her hands.

`Yes, I can though,' rejoined her father. `I've got him, hard and fast.'

`Wa'at!' exclaimed John Browdie, pushing away his plate. `Got that poor -- dom'd scoondrel, -- where?'

`Why, in the top back-room, at my lodging,' replied Squeers, `with him on one side, and the key on the other.'

`At thy loodgin'! Thee'st gotten him at thy loodgin'? Ho! ho! The schoolmeasther agin all England. Give us thee hond, mun; -- I'm darned but I must shak thee by the hond for thot. -- Gotten him at thy loodgin'?'