Charles Dickens: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

CHAPTER 34: Wherein Mr Ralph Nickleby is visited... (continued)

'Well,' remarked Squeers, a little disconcerted, 'I had him there; but that's because we breakfasted early this morning, and he hasn't had his lunch yet. Why you couldn't shut a bit of him in a door, when he's had his dinner. Look at them tears, sir,' said Squeers, with a triumphant air, as Master Wackford wiped his eyes with the cuff of his jacket, 'there's oiliness!'

'He looks well, indeed,' returned Ralph, who, for some purposes of his own, seemed desirous to conciliate the schoolmaster. 'But how is Mrs Squeers, and how are you?'

'Mrs Squeers, sir,' replied the proprietor of Dotheboys, 'is as she always is--a mother to them lads, and a blessing, and a comfort, and a joy to all them as knows her. One of our boys--gorging his-self with vittles, and then turning in; that's their way--got a abscess on him last week. To see how she operated upon him with a pen-knife! Oh Lor!' said Squeers, heaving a sigh, and nodding his head a great many times, 'what a member of society that woman is!'

Mr Squeers indulged in a retrospective look, for some quarter of a minute, as if this allusion to his lady's excellences had naturally led his mind to the peaceful village of Dotheboys near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire; and then looked at Ralph, as if waiting for him to say something.

'Have you quite recovered that scoundrel's attack?' asked Ralph.

'I've only just done it, if I've done it now,' replied Squeers. 'I was one blessed bruise, sir,' said Squeers, touching first the roots of his hair, and then the toes of his boots, 'from HERE to THERE. Vinegar and brown paper, vinegar and brown paper, from morning to night. I suppose there was a matter of half a ream of brown paper stuck upon me, from first to last. As I laid all of a heap in our kitchen, plastered all over, you might have thought I was a large brown-paper parcel, chock full of nothing but groans. Did I groan loud, Wackford, or did I groan soft?' asked Mr Squeers, appealing to his son.

'Loud,' replied Wackford.