from time to time, and by dint of repeated inquiries he at length reached the dwelling of Newman Noggs.
All that evening Newman had been hunting and searching in by-ways and corners for the very person who now knocked at his door, while Nicholas had been pursuing the same inquiry in other directions. He was sitting with a melancholy air, at his poor supper, when Smike's timorous and uncertain knock reached his ears. Alive to every sound in his anxious and expectant state, Newman hurried down stairs, and, uttering a cry of joyful surprise, dragged the welcome visitor into the passage and up the stairs, and said not a word until he had him safe in his own garret and the door was shut behind them, when he mixed a great mug-full of gin and water, and holding it to Smike's mouth, as one might hold a bowl of medicine to the lips of a refractory child, commanded him to drain it to the very last drop.
Newman looked uncommonly blank when he found that Smike did little more than put his lips to the precious mixture; he was in the act of raising the mug to his own mouth with a deep sigh of compassion for his poor friend's weakness, when Smike, beginning to relate the adventures which had befallen him, arrested him half-way, and he stood listening with the mug in his hand.
It was odd enough to see the change that came over Newman as Smike proceeded. At first he stood rubbing his lips with the back of his hand, as a preparatory ceremony towards composing himself for a draught; then, at the mention of Squeers, he took the mug under his arm, and opening his eyes very wide, looked on in the utmost astonishment. When Smike came to the assault upon himself in the hackney-coach, he hastily deposited the mug upon the table, and limped up and down the room in a state of the greatest excitement, stopping himself with a jerk every now and then as if to listen more attentively. When John Browdie came to be spoken of, he dropped by slow and gradual degrees into a chair, and rubbing his hands upon his knees—quicker and quicker as the story reached its climax—burst at last into a laugh composed of one loud sonorous "Ha! Ha!" having given vent to which, his countenance immediately fell again as he inquired, with the utmost anxiety, whether it was probable that John Browdie and Squeers had come to blows.
"No! I think not," replied Smike. "I don't think he could have missed me till I had got quite away."
Newman scratched his head with a show of great disappointment, and once more lifting up the mug, applied himself to the contents, smiling meanwhile over the rim with a grim and ghastly smile at Smike.
"You shall stay here," said Newman; "you're tired—fagged. I'll tell them you're come back. They have been half mad about you. Mr. Nicholas—"
"God bless him!" cried Smike.
"Amen!" returned Newman. "He hasn't had a minute's rest or peace; no more has the old lady, nor Miss Nickleby."
"No, no. Has she thought about me?" said Smike. "Has she though? oh, has she—has she ? Don't tell me so, if she has not."
