dirty windows, and few sounds but the pattering of the rain, and occasionally the heavy closing of some creaking door.
Mr. Squeers continued to look disconsolately about him, and to listen to these noises in profound silence, broken only by the rustling of his large coat, as he now and then moved his arm to raise his glass to his lips—Mr. Squeers continued to do this for some time, until the increasing gloom warned him to snuff the candle. Seeming to be slightly roused by this exertion, he raised his eyes to the ceiling, and fixing them upon some uncouth and fantastic figures, traced upon it by the wet and damp which had penetrated through the roof, broke out into the following soliloquy:
"Well, this is a pretty go, is this here!—an uncommon pretty go! Here have I been a matter of how many weeks—hard upon six—a-follering up this here blessed old dowager, petty larcenerer,"—Mr. Squeers delivered himself of this epithet with great difficulty and effort—"and Dotheboys Hall a-running itself regularly to seed the while! That's the worst of ever being in with a ow-dacious chap like that old Nickleby; you never know when he's done with you, and if you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound."
This remark perhaps reminded Mr. Squeers that he was in for a hundred pound; at any rate, his countenance relaxed, and he raised his glass to his mouth with an air of greater enjoyment of its contents than he had before evinced.
"I never see," soliloquised Mr. Squeers in continuation, "I never see nor come across such a file as that old Nickleby—never. He's out of everybody's depth, he is. He's what you may a-call a rasper, is Nickleby. To see how sly and cunning he grubbed on, day after day, a-worming and plodding and tracing and turning and twining of hisself about, till he found out where this precious Mrs. Peg was hid, and cleared the ground for me to work upon—creeping and crawling and gliding, like a ugly old, bright-eyed, stagnation-blooded adder! Ah! He'd have made a good un in our line, but it would have been too limited for him; his genius would have busted all bounds, and coming over every obstacle, broke down all before it, 'till it erected itself into a monneyment of—Well, I'll think of the rest, and say it when conwenient."
Making a halt in his reflections at this place, Mr. Squeers again put his glass to his lips, and drawing a dirty letter from his pocket, proceeded to con over its contents with the air of a man who had read it very often, and now refreshed his memory rather in the absence of better amusement than for any specific information.
"The pigs is well," said Mr. Squeers, "the cows is well, and the boys is bobbish. Young Sprouter has been a-winking, has he? I'll wink him when I get back. 'Cobbey would persist in sniffing while he was a-eating his dinner, and said that the beef was so strong it made him.'—Very good, Cobbey, we'll see if we can't make you sniff a little without beef. 'Pitcher was took with another fever,'—of course he was—'and being fetched by his friends, died the day after he got home,'—of course he did, and out of aggravation; it's part of a deep-laid system.
