"Have I lived to this day to be called a fright!" cried Miss Knag, suddenly becoming convulsive, and making an effort to tear her front off.
"Oh no, no," replied the chorus, "pray don't say so; don't, now."
"Have I deserved to be called an elderly person?" screamed Miss Knag, wrestling with the supernumeraries.
"Don't think of such things, dear," answered the chorus.
"I hate her," cried Miss Knag; "I detest and hate her. Never let her speak to me again; never let anybody who is a friend of mine speak to her; a slut, a hussy, an impudent artful hussy!" Having denounced the object of her wrath in these terms. Miss Knag screamed once, hiccuped thrice, and gurgled in her throat several times: slumbered, shivered, woke, came to, composed her head-dress, and declared herself quite well again.
Poor Kate had regarded these proceedings at first in perfect bewilderment. She had then turned red and pale by turns, and once or twice essayed to speak; but as the true motives of this altered behaviour developed themselves, she retired a few paces, and looked calmly on without deigning a reply. But although she walked proudly to her seat, and turned her back upon the group of little satellites who clustered round their ruling planet in the remotest corner of the room, she gave way in secret to some such bitter tears as would have gladdened Miss Knag inmost soul if she could have seen them fall.
CHAPTER XIX.
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 up stairs, 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 retired manner of Mr. Nickleby himself.
