Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

Of Miss Squeers, Mrs Squeers, Master Squeers, and Mr Squeers; and of
various Matters and Persons connected no less with the Squeerses
than Nicholas Nickleby

When Mr Squeers left the schoolroom for the night, he betook
himself, as has been before remarked, to his own fireside, which was
situated--not in the room in which Nicholas had supped on the night
of his arrival, but in a smaller apartment in the rear of the
premises, where his lady wife, his amiable son, and accomplished
daughter, were in the full enjoyment of each other's society; Mrs
Squeers being engaged in the matronly pursuit of stocking-darning;
and the young lady and gentleman being occupied in the adjustment of
some youthful differences, by means of a pugilistic contest across
the table, which, on the approach of their honoured parent, subsided
into a noiseless exchange of kicks beneath it.

And, in this place, it may be as well to apprise the reader, that
Miss Fanny Squeers was in her three-and-twentieth year. If there be
any one grace or loveliness inseparable from that particular period
of life, Miss Squeers may be presumed to have been possessed of it,
as there is no reason to suppose that she was a solitary exception
to an universal rule. She was not tall like her mother, but short
like her father; from the former she inherited a voice of harsh
quality; from the latter a remarkable expression of the right eye,
something akin to having none at all.

Miss Squeers had been spending a few days with a neighbouring
friend, and had only just returned to the parental roof. To this
circumstance may be referred, her having heard nothing of Nicholas,
until Mr Squeers himself now made him the subject of conversation.

'Well, my dear,' said Squeers, drawing up his chair, 'what do you
think of him by this time?'

'Think of who?' inquired Mrs Squeers; who (as she often remarked)
was no grammarian, thank Heaven.

'Of the young man--the new teacher--who else could I mean?'

'Oh! that Knuckleboy,' said Mrs Squeers impatiently. 'I hate him.'

'What do you hate him for, my dear?' asked Squeers.

'What's that to you?' retorted Mrs Squeers. 'If I hate him, that's
enough, ain't it?'

'Quite enough for him, my dear, and a great deal too much I dare
say, if he knew it,' replied Squeers in a pacific tone. 'I only ask
from curiosity, my dear.'

'Well, then, if you want to know,' rejoined Mrs Squeers, 'I'll tell
you. Because he's a proud, haughty, consequential, turned-up-nosed
peacock.'

Mrs Squeers, when excited, was accustomed to use strong language,
and, moreover, to make use of a plurality of epithets, some of which
were of a figurative kind, as the word peacock, and