"Eh?" cried Newman Noggs. "Taken in by the servant?"
"Newman, Newman," said Nicholas, laying his hand upon his shoulder; "it was the wrong servant too."
Newman's under-jaw dropped, and he gazed at Nicholas with his sound eye fixed fast and motionless in his head.
"Don't take it to heart," said Nicholas; "it's of no consequence; you see I don't care about it; you followed the wrong person, that's all."
That was all. Whether Newman Noggs had looked round the pump in a slanting direction so long, that his sight became impaired, or whether, finding that there was time to spare, he had recruited himself with a few drops of something stronger than the pump could yield—by whatsoever means it had come to pass, this was his mistake.
And Nicholas went home to brood upon it, and to meditate upon the charms of the unknown young lady, now as far beyond his reach as ever.
CHAPTER XLI.
CONTAINING SOME ROMANTIC PASSAGES BETWEEN MRS. NICKLEBY AND THE GENTLEMAN IN THE SMALL-CLOTHES NEXT DOOR.
Ever since her last momentous conversation with her son, Mrs. Nickleby had by little and little begun to display unusual care in the adornment of her person, gradually superadding to those staid and matronly habiliments, which had up to that time formed her ordinary attire, a variety of embellishments and decorations, slight perhaps in themselves, but, taken together, and considered with reference to the subject of her disclosure, of no mean importance. Even her black dress assumed something of a deadly-lively air from the jaunty style in which it was worn; and, eked out as its lingering attractions were, by a prudent disposal here and there of certain juvenile ornaments of little or no value, which had for that reason alone escaped the general wreck and been permitted to slumber peacefully in odd corners of old drawers and
boxes where daylight seldom shone, her mourning garments assumed quite a new character, and from being the outward tokens of respect and sorrow for the dead, were converted into signals of very slaughterous and killing designs upon the living.
Mrs. Nickleby might have been stimulated to this proceeding by a lofty sense of duty, and impulses of unquestionable excellence. She might by this time have become impressed with the sinfulness of long indulgence in unavailing woe, or the necessity of setting a proper example of neatness and decorum to her blooming daughter. Considerations of duty and responsibility apart, the change might have taken its rise in feelings of the purest and most disinterested charity. The gentleman next door had been vilified by Nicholas; rudely stigmatised as a dotard and an idiot; and for these attacks upon his understanding, Mrs. Nickleby was in some sort accountable. She might have felt that it was the act of a good Christian to show, by all means in her power,
