“No, but listen to me,” said the young man. “If admiration of a pretty face were criminal, I should be the most hopeless person alive, for I cannot resist one. It has the most extraordinary effect upon me, checks and controls me in the most furious and obstinate mood. You see what an effect yours has had upon me already.”
“Oh, that’s very pretty,” replied the young lady, tossing her head, “but—”
“Yes, I know it’s very pretty,” said the young man, looking with an air of admiration in the barmaid’s face; “I said so, you know, just this moment. But beauty should be spoken of respectfully—respectfully, and in proper terms, and with a becoming sense of its worth and excellence, whereas this fellow has no more notion—”
The young lady interrupted the conversation at this point, by thrusting her head out of the bar-window, and inquiring of the waiter in a shrill voice whether that young man who had been knocked down was going to stand in the passage all night, or whether the entrance was to be left clear for other people. The waiters taking the hint, and communicating it to the hostlers, were not slow to change their tone too, and the result was, that the unfortunate victim was bundled out in a twinkling.
“I am sure I have seen that fellow before,” said Nicholas.
“Indeed!” replied his new acquaintance.
“I am certain of it,” said Nicholas, pausing to reflect. “Where can I have—stop!—yes, to be sure—he belongs to a register-office up at the west end of the town. I knew I recollected the face.”
It was, indeed, Tom, the ugly clerk.
“That’s odd enough!” said Nicholas, ruminating upon the strange manner in which the register-office seemed to start up and stare him in the face every now and then, and when he least expected it.
“I am much obliged to you for your kind advocacy of my cause when it most needed an advocate,” said the young man, laughing, and drawing a card from his pocket. “Perhaps you’ll do me the favour to let me know where I can thank you.”
Nicholas took the card, and glancing at it involuntarily as he returned the compliment, evinced very great surprise.
“Mr. Frank Cheeryble!” said Nicholas. “Surely not the nephew of Cheeryble Brothers, who is expected tomorrow!”
“I don’t usually call myself the nephew of the firm,” returned Mr. Frank, good-humouredly; “but of the two excellent individuals who compose it, I am proud to say I am the nephew. And you, I see, are Mr. Nickleby, of whom I have heard so much! This is a most unexpected meeting, but not the less welcome, I assure you.”
Nicholas responded to these compliments with others of the same kind, and they shook hands warmly. Then he introduced John Browdie, who had remained in a state of great admiration ever since the young lady in the bar had been so skilfully won over to the right side. Then Mrs. John Browdie was introduced, and finally they all went upstairs together and spent the next half-hour with great satisfaction and mutual entertainment; Mrs. John Browdie beginning the conversation by declaring that of all the made-up things she ever saw, that young woman below-stairs was the vainest and the plainest.
This Mr. Frank Cheeryble, although, to judge from what had recently taken place, a hotheaded young man (which is not an absolute miracle and phenomenon in nature), was a sprightly, good-humoured, pleasant fellow, with much both in his countenance and disposition that reminded Nicholas very strongly of the kindhearted brothers. His manner was as unaffected as theirs, and his demeanour full of that heartiness which, to most people who have anything generous in their composition, is peculiarly prepossessing. Add to this, that he was good-looking and intelligent, had a plentiful share of vivacity, was extremely cheerful, and accommodated himself in five minutes’ time to all John Browdie’s oddities with as much ease as if he had known him from a boy; and it will be a source of no great wonder that, when they parted for the night, he had produced a most favourable impression, not only upon the worthy Yorkshireman and his wife, but upon Nicholas also, who, revolving all these things in his mind as he made the best of his way home, arrived at the conclusion that he had laid the foundation of a most agreeable and desirable acquaintance.
“But it’s a most extraordinary thing about that register-office fellow!” thought Nicholas. “Is it likely that this nephew can know anything about that beautiful girl? When Tim Linkinwater gave me to understand the other day that he was coming to take a share in the business here, he said he had been superintending it in Germany for four years, and that during the last six months he had been engaged in establishing an agency in the north of England. That’s four years and a half—four years and a half. She can’t be more than seventeen—say eighteen at the outside. She was quite a child when he went away, then. I should say he knew nothing about her and had never seen her, so he can give me no information. At all events,” thought Nicholas, coming to the real point in his mind, “there can be no danger of any prior occupation of her affections in that quarter; that’s quite clear.”
Is selfishness a necessary ingredient in the composition of that passion called love, or does it deserve all the fine things which poets, in the exercise of their undoubted vocation, have said of it? There are, no doubt, authenticated instances of gentlemen having given up ladies and ladies having given up gentlemen to meritorious rivals, under circumstances of great high-mindedness; but is it quite established that the majority of such ladies and gentlemen have not made a virtue of necessity,
