Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

Descriptive of a Dinner at Mr Ralph Nickleby's, and of the Manner in
which the Company entertained themselves, before Dinner, at Dinner,
and after Dinner.

The bile and rancour of the worthy Miss Knag undergoing no
diminution during the remainder of the week, but rather augmenting
with every successive hour; and the honest ire of all the young
ladies rising, or seeming to rise, in exact proportion to the good
spinster's indignation, and both waxing very hot every time Miss
Nickleby was called upstairs; it will be readily imagined that that
young lady's daily life was none of the most cheerful or enviable
kind. She hailed the arrival of Saturday night, as a prisoner would
a few delicious hours' respite from slow and wearing torture, and
felt that the poor pittance for her first week's labour would have
been dearly and hardly earned, had its amount been trebled.

When she joined her mother, as usual, at the street corner, she was
not a little surprised to find her in conversation with Mr Ralph
Nickleby; but her surprise was soon redoubled, no less by the matter
of their conversation, than by the smoothed and altered manner of Mr
Nickleby himself.

'Ah! my dear!' said Ralph; 'we were at that moment talking about
you.'

'Indeed!' replied Kate, shrinking, though she scarce knew why, from
her uncle's cold glistening eye.

'That instant,' said Ralph. 'I was coming to call for you, making
sure to catch you before you left; but your mother and I have been
talking over family affairs, and the time has slipped away so
rapidly--'

'Well, now, hasn't it?' interposed Mrs Nickleby, quite insensible to
the sarcastic tone of Ralph's last remark. 'Upon my word, I
couldn't have believed it possible, that such a--Kate, my dear,
you're to dine with your uncle at half-past six o'clock tomorrow.'

Triumphing in having been the first to communicate this
extraordinary intelligence, Mrs Nickleby nodded and smiled a great
many times, to impress its full magnificence on Kate's wondering
mind, and then flew off, at an acute angle, to a committee of ways
and means.

'Let me see,' said the good lady. 'Your black silk frock will be
quite dress enough, my dear, with that pretty little scarf, and a
plain band in your hair, and a pair of black silk stock--Dear,
dear,' cried Mrs Nickleby, flying off at another angle, 'if I had
but those unfortunate amethysts of mine--you recollect them, Kate,
my love--how they used to sparkle, you know--but your papa, your
poor dear papa--ah! there never was anything so cruelly sacrificed
as those jewels were, never!' Overpowered by this agonising thought,
Mrs Nickleby shook her head, in a melancholy manner, and applied her