Charles Dickens : The Complete Novels (Best Navigation, Active TOC) (A to Z Classics). A to Z Classics

letter from his assistant, and fixing a cold look upon him, opened, read it, put it in his pocket, and having now hit the time to a second, began winding up his watch.

      'It is as I expected, Newman,' said Mr Nickleby, while he was thus engaged. 'He IS dead. Dear me! Well, that's sudden thing. I shouldn't have thought it, really.' With these touching expressions of sorrow, Mr Nickleby replaced his watch in his fob, and, fitting on his gloves to a nicety, turned upon his way, and walked slowly westward with his hands behind him.

      'Children alive?' inquired Noggs, stepping up to him.

      'Why, that's the very thing,' replied Mr Nickleby, as though his thoughts were about them at that moment. 'They are both alive.'

      'Both!' repeated Newman Noggs, in a low voice.

      'And the widow, too,' added Mr Nickleby, 'and all three in London, confound them; all three here, Newman.'

      Newman fell a little behind his master, and his face was curiously twisted as by a spasm; but whether of paralysis, or grief, or inward laughter, nobody but himself could possibly explain. The expression of a man's face is commonly a help to his thoughts, or glossary on his speech; but the countenance of Newman Noggs, in his ordinary moods, was a problem which no stretch of ingenuity could solve.

      'Go home!' said Mr Nickleby, after they had walked a few paces: looking round at the clerk as if he were his dog. The words were scarcely uttered when Newman darted across the road, slunk among the crowd, and disappeared in an instant.

      'Reasonable, certainly!' muttered Mr Nickleby to himself, as he walked on, 'very reasonable! My brother never did anything for me, and I never expected it; the breath is no sooner out of his body than I am to be looked to, as the support of a great hearty woman, and a grown boy and girl. What are they to me! I never saw them.'

      Full of these, and many other reflections of a similar kind, Mr Nickleby made the best of his way to the Strand, and, referring to his letter as if to ascertain the number of the house he wanted, stopped at a private door about half-way down that crowded thoroughfare.

      A miniature painter lived there, for there was a large gilt frame screwed upon the street-door, in which were displayed, upon a black velvet ground, two portraits of naval dress coats with faces looking out of them, and telescopes attached; one of a young gentleman in a very vermilion uniform, flourishing a sabre; and one of a literary character with a high forehead, a pen and ink, six books, and a curtain. There was, moreover, a touching representation of a young lady reading a manuscript in an unfathomable forest, and a charming whole length of a large-headed little boy, sitting on a stool with his legs fore-shortened to the size of salt-spoons. Besides these works of art, there were a great many heads of old ladies and gentlemen smirking at each other out of blue and brown skies, and an elegantly written card of terms with an embossed border.

      Mr Nickleby glanced at these frivolities with great contempt, and gave a double knock, which, having been thrice repeated, was answered by a servant girl with an uncommonly dirty face.

      'Is Mrs Nickleby at home, girl?' demanded Ralph sharply.

      'Her name ain't Nickleby,' said the girl, 'La Creevy, you mean.'

      Mr Nickleby looked very indignant at the handmaid on being thus corrected, and demanded with much asperity what she meant; which she was about to state, when a female voice proceeding from a perpendicular staircase at the end of the passage, inquired who was wanted.

      'Mrs Nickleby,' said Ralph.

      'It's the second floor, Hannah,' said the same voice; 'what a stupid thing you are! Is the second floor at home?'

      'Somebody went out just now, but I think it was the attic which had been a cleaning of himself,' replied the girl.

      'You had better see,' said the invisible female. 'Show the gentleman where the bell is, and tell him he mustn't knock double knocks for the second floor; I can't allow a knock except when the bell's broke, and then it must be two single ones.'

      'Here,' said Ralph, walking in without more parley, 'I beg your pardon; is that Mrs La what's-her-name?'

      'Creevy—La Creevy,' replied the voice, as a yellow headdress bobbed over the banisters.

      'I'll speak to you a moment, ma'am, with your leave,' said Ralph.

      The voice replied that the gentleman was to walk up; but he had walked up before it spoke, and stepping into the first floor, was received by the wearer of the yellow head-dress, who had a gown to correspond, and was of much the same colour herself. Miss La Creevy was a mincing young lady of fifty, and Miss La Creevy's apartment was the gilt frame downstairs on a larger scale and something dirtier.

      'Hem!' said Miss La Creevy, coughing delicately behind her black silk mitten. 'A miniature, I presume. A very strongly-marked countenance for the purpose, sir. Have you ever sat before?'

      'You mistake my purpose, I see, ma'am,' replied Mr Nickleby, in his usual blunt fashion. 'I have no money to throw away on miniatures, ma'am, and nobody to give one to (thank God) if I had. Seeing you on the stairs, I wanted to ask a question of you, about some lodgers here.'

      Miss La Creevy coughed once more—this cough was to conceal her disappointment—and said, 'Oh, indeed!'

      'I infer from what you said to your servant, that the floor above belongs to you, ma'am,' said Mr Nickleby.

      Yes it did, Miss La Creevy replied. The upper part of the house belonged to her, and as she had no necessity for the second-floor rooms just then, she was in the habit of letting them. Indeed, there was a lady from the country and her two children in them, at that present speaking.

      'A widow, ma'am?' said Ralph.

      'Yes, she is a widow,' replied the lady.

      'A POOR widow, ma'am,' said Ralph, with a powerful emphasis on that little adjective which conveys so much.

      'Well, I'm afraid she IS poor,' rejoined Miss La Creevy.

      'I happen to know that she is, ma'am,' said Ralph. 'Now, what business has a poor widow in such a house as this, ma'am?'

      'Very true,' replied Miss La Creevy, not at all displeased with this implied compliment to the apartments. 'Exceedingly true.'

      'I know her circumstances intimately, ma'am,' said Ralph; 'in fact, I am a relation of the family; and I should recommend you not to keep them here, ma'am.'

      'I should hope, if there was any incompatibility to meet the pecuniary obligations,' said Miss La Creevy with another cough, 'that the lady's family would—'

      'No they wouldn't, ma'am,' interrupted Ralph, hastily. 'Don't think it.'

      'If I am to understand that,' said Miss La Creevy, 'the case wears a very different appearance.'

      'You may understand it then, ma'am,' said Ralph, 'and make your arrangements accordingly. I am the family, ma'am—at least, I believe I am the only relation they have, and I think it right that you should know I can't support them in their extravagances. How long have they taken these lodgings for?'

      'Only from week to week,' replied Miss La Creevy. 'Mrs Nickleby paid the first week in advance.'

      'Then you had better get them out at the end of it,' said Ralph. 'They can't do better than go back to the country, ma'am; they are in everybody's way here.'

      'Certainly,' said Miss La Creevy, rubbing her hands, 'if Mrs Nickleby took the apartments without the means of paying for them, it was very unbecoming a lady.'

      'Of course it was, ma'am,' said Ralph.

      'And naturally,' continued Miss La Creevy, 'I who am, AT PRESENT— hem—an unprotected female, cannot afford to lose by the apartments.'

      'Of course you can't, ma'am,' replied Ralph.

      'Though at the same time,' added Miss La Creevy, who was plainly wavering between her good-nature and her interest, 'I have nothing whatever to say against the lady, who is extremely pleasant and affable, though, poor thing, she seems terribly low in her spirits; nor against the young people either,