"Then tell Mr. Charles I want to see him."
"You shall see," said Tim, getting off his stool with great agility. "You shall see not only Mr. Charles, but Mr. Ned likewise."
Tim stopped, looked steadily and severely at Ralph, nodded his head once in a curt manner which seemed to say there was a little more behind, and vanished. After a short interval he returned, and ushering Ralph into the presence of the two brothers, remained in the room himself.
"I want to speak to you, who spoke to me this morning," said Ralph, pointing out with his finger the man whom he addressed.
"I have no secrets from my brother Ned, or from Tim Linkin water," observed Brother Charles quietly.
"I have," said Ralph.
"Mr. Nickleby, Sir," said brother Ned, "the matter upon which my brother Charles called upon you this morning is one which is already perfectly well known to us three and to others besides, and must unhappily soon become known to a great many more. He waited upon you, Sir, this morning alone, as a matter of delicacy and consideration. We feel now that further delicacy and consideration would be misplaced, and if we confer together it must be as we are or not at all."
"Well, gentlemen," said Ralph with a curl of the lip, "talking in riddles would seem to be the peculiar forte of you two, and I suppose your clerk, like a prudent man, has studied the art also with a view to your good graces. Talk in company, gentlemen, in God's name. I'll humour you."
"Humour!" cried Tim Linkinwater, suddenly growing very red in the face, "He'll humour us! He'll humour Cheeryble Brothers! Do you hear that? Do you hear him? Do you hear him say he'll humour Cheeryble Brothers?"
"Tim," said Charles and Ned together, "pray Tim, pray now don't."
Tim, taking the hint, stifled his indignation as well as he could and suffered it to escape through his spectacles, with the additional safety-valve of a short hysterical laugh now and then, which seemed to relieve him mightily.
"As nobody bids me to a seat," said Ralph looking round, "I'll take one, for I am fatigued with walking. And now if you please, gentlemen, I wish to know—I demand to know; I have the right—what you have to say to me which justifies such a tone as you have assumed, and that underhand interference in my affairs which I have reason to suppose you have been practising. I tell you plainly, gentlemen, that little as I care for the opinion of the world (as the slang goes) I don't choose to submit quietly to slander and malice. Whether you suffer yourselves to be imposed upon too easily, or wilfully make yourselves parties to it, the result to me is the same, and in either case you can't expect from a plain man like myself much consideration or forbearance."
So coolly and deliberately was this said, that nine men out of ten, ignorant of the circumstances, would have supposed Ralph to be really an injured man. There he sat with folded arms; paler than usual certainly and sufficiently ill-favoured, but quite collected—far more so than the brothers or the exasperated Tim, and ready to face out the very worst.
