Nicholas Nickleby - The Original Classic Edition. Dickens Charles
twos is six--sixty pound. What's come of all the boys? what's parents got in their heads? what does it all mean?'
Here the little boy on the top of the trunk gave a violent sneeze.
'Halloa, sir!' growled the schoolmaster, turning round. 'What's that, sir?'
'Nothing, please sir,' replied the little boy.
'Nothing, sir!' exclaimed Mr Squeers.
'Please sir, I sneezed,' rejoined the boy, trembling till the little trunk shook under him.
'Oh! sneezed, did you?' retorted Mr Squeers. 'Then what did you say "nothing" for, sir?'
In default of a better answer to this question, the little boy screwed a couple of knuckles into each of his eyes and began to cry, wherefore Mr Squeers knocked him off the trunk with a blow on one side of the face, and knocked him on again with a blow on the other.
'Wait till I get you down into Yorkshire, my young gentleman,' said Mr Squeers, 'and then I'll give you the rest. Will you hold that
noise, sir?'
'Ye--ye--yes,' sobbed the little boy, rubbing his face very hard with the Beggar's Petition in printed calico.
'Then do so at once, sir,' said Squeers. 'Do you hear?'
As this admonition was accompanied with a threatening gesture, and uttered with a savage aspect, the little boy rubbed his face
harder, as if to keep the tears back; and, beyond alternately sniffing and choking, gave no further vent to his emotions.
'Mr Squeers,' said the waiter, looking in at this juncture; 'here's a gentleman asking for you at the bar.'
'Show the gentleman in, Richard,' replied Mr Squeers, in a soft voice. 'Put your handkerchief in your pocket, you little scoundrel, or
I'll murder you when the gentleman goes.'
The schoolmaster had scarcely uttered these words in a fierce whisper, when the stranger entered. Affecting not to see him, Mr
Squeers feigned to be intent upon mending a pen, and offering benevolent advice to his youthful pupil.
'My dear child,' said Mr Squeers, 'all people have their trials. This early trial of yours that is fit to make your little heart burst, and your very eyes come out of your head with crying, what is it? Nothing; less than nothing. You are leaving your friends, but you will have a father in me, my dear, and a mother in Mrs Squeers. At the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, where youth are boarded, clothed, booked, washed, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries--'
'It IS the gentleman,' observed the stranger, stopping the schoolmaster in the rehearsal of his advertisement. 'Mr Squeers, I believe,
sir?'
'The same, sir,' said Mr Squeers, with an assumption of extreme surprise.
'The gentleman,' said the stranger, 'that advertised in the Times newspaper?'
'--Morning Post, Chronicle, Herald, and Advertiser, regarding the Academy called Dotheboys Hall at the delightful village of
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Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire,' added Mr Squeers. 'You come on business, sir. I see by my young friends. How do you do, my little gentleman? and how do you do, sir?' With this salutation Mr Squeers patted the heads of two hollow-eyed, small-boned little boys, whom the applicant had brought with him, and waited for further communications.
'I am in the oil and colour way. My name is Snawley, sir,' said the stranger. Squeers inclined his head as much as to say, 'And a remarkably pretty name, too.'
The stranger continued. 'I have been thinking, Mr Squeers, of placing my two boys at your school.'
'It is not for me to say so, sir,' replied Mr Squeers, 'but I don't think you could possibly do a better thing.'
'Hem!' said the other. 'Twenty pounds per annewum, I believe, Mr Squeers?'
'Guineas,' rejoined the schoolmaster, with a persuasive smile.
'Pounds for two, I think, Mr Squeers,' said Mr Snawley, solemnly.
'I don't think it could be done, sir,' replied Squeers, as if he had never considered the proposition before. 'Let me see; four fives is twenty, double that, and deduct the--well, a pound either way shall not stand betwixt us. You must recommend me to your connection, sir, and make it up that way.'
'They are not great eaters,' said Mr Snawley.
'Oh! that doesn't matter at all,' replied Squeers. 'We don't consider the boys' appetites at our establishment.' This was strictly true;
they did not.
'Every wholesome luxury, sir, that Yorkshire can afford,' continued Squeers; 'every beautiful moral that Mrs Squeers can instil;
every--in short, every comfort of a home that a boy could wish for, will be theirs, Mr Snawley.'
'I should wish their morals to be particularly attended to,' said Mr Snawley.
'I am glad of that, sir,' replied the schoolmaster, drawing himself up. 'They have come to the right shop for morals, sir.'
'You are a moral man yourself,' said Mr Snawley.
'I rather believe I am, sir,' replied Squeers.
'I have the satisfaction to know you are, sir,' said Mr Snawley. 'I asked one of your references, and he said you were pious.'
'Well, sir, I hope I am a little in that line,' replied Squeers.
'I hope I am also,' rejoined the other. 'Could I say a few words with you in the next box?'
'By all means,' rejoined Squeers with a grin. 'My dears, will you speak to your new playfellow a minute or two? That is one of my
boys, sir. Belling his name is,--a Taunton boy that, sir.'
'Is he, indeed?' rejoined Mr Snawley, looking at the poor little urchin as if he were some extraordinary natural curiosity.
'He goes down with me tomorrow, sir,' said Squeers. 'That's his luggage that he is a sitting upon now. Each boy is required to bring, sir, two suits of clothes, six shirts, six pair of stockings, two nightcaps, two pocket-handkerchiefs, two pair of shoes, two hats, and a razor.'
'A razor!' exclaimed Mr Snawley, as they walked into the next box. 'What for?'
'To shave with,' replied Squeers, in a slow and measured tone.
There was not much in these three words, but there must have been something in the manner in which they were said, to attract
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attention; for the schoolmaster and his companion looked steadily at each other for a few seconds, and then exchanged a very meaning smile. Snawley was a sleek, flat-nosed man, clad in sombre garments, and long black gaiters, and bearing in his countenance an expression of much mortification and sanctity; so, his smiling without any obvious reason was the more remarkable.
'Up to what age do you keep boys at your school then?' he asked at length.
'Just as long as their friends make the quarterly payments to my agent in town, or until such time as they run away,' replied Squeers.
'Let us understand each other; I see we may safely do so. What are these boys;--natural children?'
'No,' rejoined Snawley, meeting the gaze of the schoolmaster's one eye. 'They ain't.'
'I thought they might be,' said Squeers, coolly. 'We have a good many of them; that boy's one.'
'Him in the next box?' said Snawley.
Squeers nodded in the affirmative; his companion took another peep at the little boy on the trunk, and, turning round again, looked
as if he were quite disappointed to see him so much like other boys, and said he should hardly have thought it.
'He is,' cried Squeers. 'But about these boys of yours; you wanted to speak to me?'
'Yes,' replied Snawley. 'The fact is, I am not their father, Mr Squeers. I'm only their father-in-law.'