Chapter 64 - Page 2

wretched shops they passed. Making towards a faint gleam of light
which streamed across the pavement from a cellar, Nicholas was about
to descend two or three steps so as to render himself visible to
those below and make his inquiry, when he was arrested by a loud
noise of scolding in a woman's voice.

'Oh come away!' said Kate, 'they are quarrelling. You'll be hurt.'

'Wait one instant, Kate. Let us hear if there's anything the
matter,' returned her brother. 'Hush!'

'You nasty, idle, vicious, good-for-nothing brute,' cried the woman,
stamping on the ground, 'why don't you turn the mangle?'

'So I am, my life and soul!' replied the man's voice. 'I am always
turning. I am perpetually turning, like a demd old horse in a
demnition mill. My life is one demd horrid grind!'

'Then why don't you go and list for a soldier?' retorted the woman;
'you're welcome to.'

'For a soldier!' cried the man. 'For a soldier! Would his joy and
gladness see him in a coarse red coat with a little tail? Would she
hear of his being slapped and beat by drummers demnebly? Would she
have him fire off real guns, and have his hair cut, and his whiskers
shaved, and his eyes turned right and left, and his trousers
pipeclayed?'

'Dear Nicholas,' whispered Kate, 'you don't know who that is. It's
Mr Mantalini I am confident.'

'Do make sure! Peep at him while I ask the way,' said Nicholas.
'Come down a step or two. Come!'

Drawing her after him, Nicholas crept down the steps and looked into
a small boarded cellar. There, amidst clothes-baskets and clothes,
stripped up to his shirt-sleeves, but wearing still an old patched
pair of pantaloons of superlative make, a once brilliant waistcoat,
and moustache and whiskers as of yore, but lacking their lustrous
dye--there, endeavouring to mollify the wrath of a buxom female--not
the lawful Madame Mantalini, but the proprietress of the concern--
and grinding meanwhile as if for very life at the mangle, whose
creaking noise, mingled with her shrill tones, appeared almost to
deafen him--there was the graceful, elegant, fascinating, and once
dashing Mantalini.

'Oh you false traitor!' cried the lady, threatening personal
violence on Mr Mantalini's face.

'False! Oh dem! Now my soul, my gentle, captivating, bewitching,
and most demnebly enslaving chick-a-biddy, be calm,' said Mr
Mantalini, humbly.

'I won't!' screamed the woman. 'I'll tear your eyes out!'

'Oh! What a demd savage lamb!' cried Mr Mantalini.

'You're never to be trusted,' screamed the woman; 'you were out all
day yesterday, and gallivanting somewhere I know. You know you were!
Isn't it enough that I paid two pound fourteen for you, and took you
out of