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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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166 great gallantry, and drawing a chair to the tea-table, began to make himself more at home than in all probability an usher has ever done in his employer’s house since ushers were first invented. The ladies were in the full delight of this altered behaviour on the part of Mr Nickleby, when the expected swain arrived, with his hair very damp from recent washing, and a clean shirt, whereof the collar might have belonged to some giant ancestor, forming, together with a white waistcoat of similar dimensions, the chief ornament of his person. ‘Well, John,’ said Miss Matilda Price (which, by-the-bye, was the name of the miller’s daughter). ‘Weel,’ said John with a grin that even the collar could not conceal. ‘I beg your pardon,’ interposed Miss Squeers, hastening to do the honours. ‘Mr Nickleby--Mr John Browdie.’ ‘Servant, sir,’ said John, who was something over six feet high, with a face and body rather above the due proportion than below it. ‘Yours to command, sir,’ replied Nicholas, making fearful ravages on the bread and butter. Mr Browdie was not a gentleman of great conversational powers, so he grinned twice more, and having now bestowed his customary mark of recognition on every person in company, grinned at nothing in particular, and helped himself to food. ‘Old wooman awa’, bean’t she?’ said Mr Browdie, with his mouth full. Miss Squeers nodded assent. Mr Browdie gave a grin of special width, as if he thought that |
