Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

Miss Nickleby, rendered desperate by the Persecution of Sir Mulberry
Hawk, and the Complicated Difficulties and Distresses which surround
her, appeals, as a last resource, to her Uncle for Protection

The ensuing morning brought reflection with it, as morning usually
does; but widely different was the train of thought it awakened in
the different persons who had been so unexpectedly brought together
on the preceding evening, by the active agency of Messrs Pyke and
Pluck.

The reflections of Sir Mulberry Hawk--if such a term can be applied
to the thoughts of the systematic and calculating man of
dissipation, whose joys, regrets, pains, and pleasures, are all of
self, and who would seem to retain nothing of the intellectual
faculty but the power to debase himself, and to degrade the very
nature whose outward semblance he wears--the reflections of Sir
Mulberry Hawk turned upon Kate Nickleby, and were, in brief, that
she was undoubtedly handsome; that her coyness MUST be easily
conquerable by a man of his address and experience, and that the
pursuit was one which could not fail to redound to his credit, and
greatly to enhance his reputation with the world. And lest this
last consideration--no mean or secondary one with Sir Mulberry--
should sound strangely in the ears of some, let it be remembered
that most men live in a world of their own, and that in that limited
circle alone are they ambitious for distinction and applause. Sir
Mulberry's world was peopled with profligates, and he acted
accordingly.

Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most
extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day.
It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at
the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the
opinion of the world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is
precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little
world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world
dumb with amazement.

The reflections of Mrs Nickleby were of the proudest and most
complacent kind; and under the influence of her very agreeable
delusion she straightway sat down and indited a long letter to Kate,
in which she expressed her entire approval of the admirable choice
she had made, and extolled Sir Mulberry to the skies; asserting, for
the more complete satisfaction of her daughter's feelings, that he
was precisely the individual whom she (Mrs Nickleby) would have
chosen for her son-in-law, if she had had the picking and choosing
from all mankind. The good lady then, with the preliminary
observation that she might be fairly supposed not to have lived in
the world so long without knowing its