Chapter 57 - Page 2

the wet and damp which had penetrated through the roof, broke
into the following soliloquy:

'Well, this is a pretty go, is this here! An uncommon pretty go!
Here have I been, a matter of how many weeks--hard upon six--a
follering up this here blessed old dowager petty larcenerer,'--Mr
Squeers delivered himself of this epithet with great difficulty and
effort,--'and Dotheboys Hall a-running itself regularly to seed the
while! That's the worst of ever being in with a owdacious chap like
that old Nickleby. You never know when he's done with you, and if
you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound.'

This remark, perhaps, reminded Mr Squeers that he was in for a
hundred pound at any rate. His countenance relaxed, and he raised
his glass to his mouth with an air of greater enjoyment of its
contents than he had before evinced.

'I never see,' soliloquised Mr Squeers in continuation, 'I never see
nor come across such a file as that old Nickleby. Never! He's out
of everybody's depth, he is. He's what you may call a rasper, is
Nickleby. To see how sly and cunning he grubbed on, day after day,
a-worming and plodding and tracing and turning and twining of
hisself about, till he found out where this precious Mrs Peg was
hid, and cleared the ground for me to work upon. Creeping and
crawling and gliding, like a ugly, old, bright-eyed, stagnation-
blooded adder! Ah! He'd have made a good 'un in our line, but it
would have been too limited for him; his genius would have busted
all bonds, and coming over every obstacle, broke down all before it,
till it erected itself into a monneyment of--Well, I'll think of the
rest, and say it when conwenient.'

Making a halt in his reflections at this place, Mr Squeers again put
his glass to his lips, and drawing a dirty letter from his pocket,
proceeded to con over its contents with the air of a man who had
read it very often, and now refreshed his memory rather in the
absence of better amusement than for any specific information.

'The pigs is well,' said Mr Squeers, 'the cows is well, and the boys
is bobbish. Young Sprouter has been a-winking, has he? I'll wink
him when I get back. "Cobbey would persist in sniffing while he was
a-eating his dinner, and said that the beef was so strong it made
him."--Very good, Cobbey, we'll see if we can't make you sniff a
little without beef. "Pitcher was took with another fever,"--of
course he was--"and being fetched by his friends, died the day after
he got home,"--of course he did, and out of aggravation; it's part
of a deep-laid system. There an't another chap in the school but
that boy as would have died exactly at the end of the quarter:
taking it out of me to the very last, and then carrying his spite to
the