"Was you, ma'am—was you?" cried a shrill female voice, "was you given to understand that I—I—was going to be engaged to an assassinating thief that shed the gore of my pa? Do you—do you think, ma'am—that I was very fond of such dirt beneath my feet, as I couldn't condescend to touch with kitchen tongs, without blacking and crocking myself by the contract? Do you, ma'am—do you? Oh! base and degrading 'Tilda!"
With these reproaches Miss Squeers flung the door wide open, and disclosed to the eyes of the astonished Browdies and Nicholas, not only her own symmetrical form, arrayed in the chaste white garments before described, (a little dirtier) but the form of her brother and father, the pair of Wackfords.
"This is the hend, is it?" continued Miss Squeers, who, being excited, aspirated her h's strongly; "this is the hend, is it, of all my forbearance and friendship for that double-faced thing—that viper, that—that—mermaid?" (Miss Squeers hesitated a long time for this last epithet, and brought it out triumphantly at last, as if it quite clinched the business.) "This is the hend, is it, of all my bearing with her deceitfulness, her lowness, her falseness, her laying herself out to catch the admiration of vulgar minds, in a way which made me blush for my—for my——"
"Gender," suggested Mr. Squeers, regarding the spectators with a malevolent eye—literally a malevolent eye.
"Yes," said Miss Squeers; "but I thank my stars that my ma is of the same——"
"Hear, hear!" remarked Mr. Squeers; "and I wish she was here to have a scratch at this company."
"This is the hend, is it," said Miss Squeers, tossing her head, and looking contemptuously at the floor, "of my taking notice of that rubbishing creature, and demeaning myself to patronise her?"
"Oh, come," rejoined Mrs. Browdie, disregarding all the endeavours of her spouse to restrain her, and forcing herself into a front row, "don't talk such nonsense as that."
"Have I not patronised you, ma'am?" demanded Miss Squeers.
"No," returned Mrs. Browdie.
"I will not look for blushes in such a quarter," said Miss Squeers, haughtily, "for that countenance is a stranger to everything but hignominiousness and red-faced boldness."
"I say," interposed John Browdie, nettled by these accumulated attacks on his wife, "dra' it mild, dra' it mild."
"You, Mr. Browdie," said Miss Squeers, taking him up very quickly, "I pity. I have no feeling for you, sir, but one of unliquidated pity."
"Oh!" said John.
"No," said Miss Squeers, looking sideways at her parent, "although I am a queer bridesmaid, and shan't be a bride in a hurry, and although my husband will be in luck, I entertain no sentiments towards you, sir, but sentiments of pity."
Here Miss Squeers looked sideways at her father again, who looked sideways at her, as much as to say, 'There you had him.’
