from Master Wackford, who, regardless of all his kicks and struggles clung to him with the tenacity of a bull-dog!
One glance showed him this; and in that one glance the terrified creature became utterly powerless and unable to utter a sound.
"Here's a go!" cried Mr. Squeers, gradually coming hand-over-hand down the umbrella, and only unhooking it when he had got tight hold of the victim's collar. "Here's a delicious go! Wackford, my boy, call up one of them coaches."
"A coach, father!" cried little Wackford.
"Yes, a coach, sir," replied Squeers, feasting his eyes upon the countenance of Smike. "Damn the expense.—Let's have him in a coach."
"What's he been a doing of?" asked a labourer, with a hod of bricks, against whom and a fellow-labourer Mr. Squeers had backed, on the first jerk of the umbrella.
"Everything!" replied Mr. Squeers, looking fixedly at his old pupil in a sort of rapturous trance. "Everything—running away, sir—joining in blood-thirsty attacks upon his master, sir—there's nothing that's bad that he hasn't done. Oh, what a delicious go is this here, good Lord!"
The man looked from Squeers to Smike; but such mental faculties as the poor fellow possessed had utterly deserted him. The coach came up; Master Wackford entered; Squeers pushed in his prize, and following close at his heels, pulled up the glasses. The coachman mounted his box and drove slowly off, leaving the two bricklayers, and an old apple-woman, and a town-made little boy returning from an evening school, who had been the only witnesses of the scene, to meditate upon it at their leisure.
Mr. Squeers sat himself down on the opposite seat to the unfortunate Smike, and planting his hands firmly on his knees looked at him for some five minutes, when, seeming to recover from his trance, he uttered a loud laugh, and slapped his old pupil's face several times—taking the right and left sides alternately.
"It isn't a dream!" said Squeers. "That's real flesh and blood, I know the feel of it;" and being quite assured of his good fortune by these experiments, Mr. Squeers administered a few boxes on the ear, lest the entertainments should seem to partake of sameness, and laughed louder and longer at every one.
"Your mother will be fit to jump out of her skin, my boy, when she hears of this," said Squeers to his son.
"Oh, won't she though, father?" replied Master Wackford.
"To think,"—said Squeers, "that you and me should be turning out of a street, and come upon him at the very nick; and that I should have him tight at only one cast of the umbrella, as if I had hooked him with a grappling-iron!—Ha, ha!"
"Didn't I catch hold of his leg, neither, father?" said little Wackford.
"You did; like a good 'un, my boy," said Mr. Squeers, patting his son's head, "and you shall have the best button-over jacket and waistcoat that the next new boy brings down, as a reward of merit—
