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Mr. Squeers meanwhile was emptying his great-coat pockets of letters to different boys, which he had brought down. Smike glanced, with an anxious and timid expression, at the papers, as if with a sickly hope that one among them might relate to him. The look was a very painful one, and went to Nicholas’s heart at once; for it told a sad history. He considered the boy more attentively, and was surprised to observe the extraordinary mixture of garments which formed his dress. Although he could not have been less than eighteen or nineteen years old, and was tall for that age, he wore a skeleton suit, which, though most absurdly short in the arms and legs, was quite wide enough for his attenuated frame. In order that the lower part of his legs might be in keeping with this singular dress, he had a very large pair of boots, originally made for tops, but now too patched and tattered for a beggar. He was lame, and as he feigned to be busy arranging the table, glanced at the letters with a look so keen, and yet so dispirited and hopeless that Nicholas could hardly bear to watch him.

“What are you bothering about there, Smike?” cried Mrs. Squeers; “let the things alone, can’t you?”

“Eh,” said Squeers, looking up. “Oh, it’s you, is it?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the youth, pressing his hands together, as though to control, by force, the nervous wandering of his fingers. “Is there—-“

“Well!” said Squeers.

“Have you–did anybody–has nothing been heard–about me?”

“Not a word,” resumed Squeers, “and never will be. Now, this is a pretty sort of thing, isn’t it, that you should have been left here, all these years, and no money paid after the first six–nor no notice taken, nor no clue to be got who you belong to? It’s a pretty sort of thing that I should have to feed a great fellow like you, and never hope to get one penny for it, isn’t it?”

The boy put his hand to his head as if he were making an effort to recollect something, and then, looking vacantly at his questioner, gradually broke into a smile, and limped away.

The following morning, when Nicholas appeared downstairs, Mrs. Squeers was in a state of great excitement.

“I can’t find the school spoon anywhere,” she said anxiously.

“Never mind it, my dear,” observed Squeers in a soothing manner; “it’s of no consequence.”

“No consequence? Why, how you talk!” retorted Mrs. Squeers sharply, “isn’t it brimstone morning?”

“I forgot, my dear,” rejoined Squeers; “yes, it certainly is. We purify the boys’ bloods now and then, Nickleby.”

“Oh! nonsense,” rejoined Mrs. Squeers. “If the young man comes to be a teacher here, let him understand, at once, that we don’t want any foolery about the boys. They have the brimstone and treacle, partly because if they hadn’t something or other in the way of medicine they ‘d be always ailing and giving a world of trouble, and partly because it spoils their appetites and comes cheaper than breakfast and dinner. So, it does them good and us good at the same time, and that’s fair enough, I’m sure!”

“But come,” said Squeers, “let’s go to the schoolroom; and lend me a hand with my school-coat, will you?”

Nicholas assisted his master to put on an old fustian shooting jacket, and Squeers, arming himself with his cane, led the way across a yard, to a door in the rear of the house.

“There,” said the schoolmaster, as they stepped in together; “this is our shop, Nickleby!”

The “shop” was a bare and dirty room, with a couple of windows, whereof a tenth part might be of glass, the remainder being stopped up with old copybooks and paper. There were a couple of long, old rickety desks, cut and notched, and inked, and damaged, in every possible way; two or three forms; a detached desk for Squeers; and another for his assistant. The ceiling was supported, like that of a barn, by cross beams and rafters; and the walls were so stained and discoloured, that it was impossible to tell whether they had ever been touched with paint or whitewash.