Chapter 28 - Page 2

ways, communicated a great
many subtle precepts applicable to the state of courtship, and
confirmed in their wisdom by her own personal experience. Above all
things she commended a strict maidenly reserve, as being not only a
very laudable thing in itself, but as tending materially to
strengthen and increase a lover's ardour. 'And I never,' added Mrs
Nickleby, 'was more delighted in my life than to observe last night,
my dear, that your good sense had already told you this.' With which
sentiment, and various hints of the pleasure she derived from the
knowledge that her daughter inherited so large an instalment of her
own excellent sense and discretion (to nearly the full measure of
which she might hope, with care, to succeed in time), Mrs Nickleby
concluded a very long and rather illegible letter.

Poor Kate was well-nigh distracted on the receipt of four closely-
written and closely-crossed sides of congratulation on the very
subject which had prevented her closing her eyes all night, and kept
her weeping and watching in her chamber; still worse and more trying
was the necessity of rendering herself agreeable to Mrs Wititterly,
who, being in low spirits after the fatigue of the preceding night,
of course expected her companion (else wherefore had she board and
salary?) to be in the best spirits possible. As to Mr Wititterly,
he went about all day in a tremor of delight at having shaken hands
with a lord, and having actually asked him to come and see him in
his own house. The lord himself, not being troubled to any
inconvenient extent with the power of thinking, regaled himself with
the conversation of Messrs Pyke and Pluck, who sharpened their wit
by a plentiful indulgence in various costly stimulants at his
expense.

It was four in the afternoon--that is, the vulgar afternoon of the
sun and the clock--and Mrs Wititterly reclined, according to custom,
on the drawing-room sofa, while Kate read aloud a new novel in three
volumes, entitled 'The Lady Flabella,' which Alphonse the doubtful
had procured from the library that very morning. And it was a
production admirably suited to a lady labouring under Mrs
Wititterly's complaint, seeing that there was not a line in it, from
beginning to end, which could, by the most remote contingency,
awaken the smallest excitement in any person breathing.

Kate read on.

'"Cherizette," said the Lady Flabella, inserting her mouse-like feet
in the blue satin slippers, which had unwittingly occasioned the
half-playful half-angry altercation between herself and the youthful
Colonel Befillaire, in the Duke of Mincefenille's SALON DE DANSE on
the previous night. "CHERIZETTE, MA CHERE, DONNEZ-MOI DE L'EAU-DE-
COLOGNE, S'IL VOUS PLAIT, MON ENFANT."