“What’s this?” inquired Nicholas.
“Hush!” rejoined Noggs, pointing to Mr. Ralph Nickleby, who was saying a few earnest words to Squeers, a short distance off: “Take it. Read it. Nobody knows. That’s all.”
“Stop!” cried Nicholas.
“No,” replied Noggs.
Nicholas cried stop, again, but Newman Noggs was gone.
A minute’s bustle, a banging of the coach doors, a swaying of the vehicle to one side, as the heavy coachman, and still heavier guard, climbed into their seats; a cry of all right, a few notes from the horn, a hasty glance of two sorrowful faces below, and the hard features of Mr. Ralph Nickleby—and the coach was gone too, and rattling over the stones of Smithfield.
The little boys’ legs being too short to admit of their feet resting upon anything as they sat, and the little boys’ bodies being consequently in imminent hazard of being jerked off the coach, Nicholas had enough to do over the stones to hold them on. Between the manual exertion and the mental anxiety attendant upon this task, he was not a little relieved when the coach stopped at the Peacock at Islington. He was still more relieved when a hearty-looking gentleman, with a very good-humoured face, and a very fresh colour, got up behind, and proposed to take the other corner of the seat.
“If we put some of these youngsters in the middle,” said the newcomer, “they’ll be safer in case of their going to sleep; eh?”
“If you’ll have the goodness, sir,” replied Squeers, “that’ll be the very thing. Mr. Nickleby, take three of them boys between you and the gentleman. Belling and the youngest Snawley can sit between me and the guard. Three children,” said Squeers, explaining to the stranger, “books as two.”
“I have not the least objection I am sure,” said the fresh-coloured gentleman; “I have a brother who wouldn’t object to book his six children as two at any butcher’s or baker’s in the kingdom, I dare say. Far from it.”
“Six children, sir?” exclaimed Squeers.
“Yes, and all boys,” replied the stranger.
“Mr. Nickleby,” said Squeers, in great haste, “catch hold of that basket. Let me give you a card, sir, of an establishment where those six boys can be brought up in an enlightened, liberal, and moral manner, with no mistake at all about it, for twenty guineas a year each—twenty guineas, sir—or I’d take all the boys together upon a average right through, and say a hundred pound a year for the lot.”
“Oh!” said the gentleman, glancing at the card, “you are the Mr. Squeers mentioned here, I presume?”
“Yes, I am, sir,” replied the worthy pedagogue; “Mr. Wackford Squeers is my name, and I’m very far from being ashamed of it. These are some of my boys, sir; that’s one of my assistants, sir—Mr. Nickleby, a gentleman’s son, and a good scholar, mathematical, classical, and commercial. We don’t do things by halves at our shop. All manner of learning my boys take down, sir; the expense is never thought of; and they get paternal treatment and washing in.”
“Upon my word,” said the gentleman, glancing at Nicholas with a half-smile, and a more than half expression of surprise, “these are advantages indeed.”
“You may say that, sir,” rejoined Squeers, thrusting his hands into his greatcoat pockets. “The most unexceptionable references are given and required. I wouldn’t take a reference with any boy, that wasn’t responsible for the payment of five pound five a quarter, no, not if you went down on your knees, and asked me, with the tears running down your face, to do it.”
“Highly considerate,” said the passenger.
“It’s my great aim and end to be considerate, sir,” rejoined Squeers. “Snawley, junior, if you don’t leave off chattering your teeth, and shaking with the cold, I’ll warm you with a severe thrashing in about half a minute’s time.”
“Sit fast here, genelmen,” said the guard as he clambered up.
“All right behind there, Dick?” cried the coachman.
“All right,” was the reply. “Off she goes!” And off she did go—if coaches be feminine—amidst a loud flourish from the guard’s horn, and the calm approval of all the judges of coaches and coach-horses congregated at the Peacock, but more especially of the helpers, who stood, with the cloths over their arms, watching the coach till it disappeared, and then lounged admiringly stablewards, bestowing various gruff encomiums on the beauty of the turnout.
When the guard (who was a stout old Yorkshireman) had blown himself quite out of breath, he put the horn into a little tunnel of a basket fastened to the coach-side for the purpose, and giving himself a plentiful shower of blows on the chest and shoulders, observed it was uncommon cold; after which, he demanded of every person separately whether he was going right through, and if not, where he was going. Satisfactory replies being made to these queries, he surmised that the roads were pretty heavy arter that fall last night, and took the liberty of asking whether any of them gentlemen carried a snuffbox. It happening that nobody did, he remarked with a mysterious air that he had heard a medical gentleman as went down to Grantham last week, say how that snuff-taking was bad for the eyes; but for his part he had never found it so, and what he said was, that everybody should speak as they found. Nobody attempting to controvert this position, he took a small brown-paper parcel out of his hat, and putting on a pair of horn spectacles (the writing being crabbed) read the direction half-a-dozen times over; having done which, he consigned the parcel to its old place, put up his spectacles again, and stared at everybody in turn. After this, he took another blow at the horn by way of refreshment; and, having now exhausted his usual topics of conversation, folded his arms as well
