Charles Dickens: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

CHAPTER 28: Miss Nickleby, rendered desperate... (continued)

'Your behaviour, Miss Nickleby,' resumed the lady, 'is very far from pleasing me--very far. I am very anxious indeed that you should do well, but you may depend upon it, Miss Nickleby, you will not, if you go on as you do.'

'Ma'am!' exclaimed Kate, proudly.

'Don't agitate me by speaking in that way, Miss Nickleby, don't,' said Mrs Wititterly, with some violence, 'or you'll compel me to ring the bell.'

Kate looked at her, but said nothing.

'You needn't suppose,' resumed Mrs Wititterly, 'that your looking at me in that way, Miss Nickleby, will prevent my saying what I am going to say, which I feel to be a religious duty. You needn't direct your glances towards me,' said Mrs Wititterly, with a sudden burst of spite; 'I am not Sir Mulberry, no, nor Lord Frederick Verisopht, Miss Nickleby, nor am I Mr Pyke, nor Mr Pluck either.'

Kate looked at her again, but less steadily than before; and resting her elbow on the table, covered her eyes with her hand.

'If such things had been done when I was a young girl,' said Mrs Wititterly (this, by the way, must have been some little time before), 'I don't suppose anybody would have believed it.'

'I don't think they would,' murmured Kate. 'I do not think anybody would believe, without actually knowing it, what I seem doomed to undergo!'

'Don't talk to me of being doomed to undergo, Miss Nickleby, if you please,' said Mrs Wititterly, with a shrillness of tone quite surprising in so great an invalid. 'I will not be answered, Miss Nickleby. I am not accustomed to be answered, nor will I permit it for an instant. Do you hear?' she added, waiting with some apparent inconsistency FOR an answer.

'I do hear you, ma'am,' replied Kate, 'with surprise--with greater surprise than I can express.'