, together with a promise of a sound
thrashing if he were not more respectful in future; so that he took nothing very
advantageous by his motion.
    »A most invaluable woman, that, Nickleby,« said Squeers when his consort had
hurried away, pushing the drudge before her.
    »Indeed, sir!« observed Nicholas.
    »I don't know her equal,« said Squeers; »I do not know her equal. That
woman, Nickleby, is always the same - always the same bustling, lively, active,
saving creetur that you see her now.«
    Nicholas sighed involuntarily at the thought of the agreeable domestic
prospect thus opened to him; but Squeers was, fortunately, too much occupied
with his own reflections to perceive it.
    »It's my way to say, when I am up in London,« continued Squeers, »that to
them boys she is a mother. But she is more than a mother to them; ten times
more. She does things for them boys, Nickleby, that I don't believe half the
mothers going, would do for their own sons.«
    »I should think they would not, sir,« answered Nicholas.
    Now, the fact was, that both Mr. and Mrs. Squeers viewed the boys in the
light of their proper and natural enemies; or, in other words, they held and
considered that their business and profession was to get as much from every boy
as could by possibility be screwed out of him. On this point they were both
agreed, and behaved in unison accordingly. The only difference between them was,
that Mrs. Squeers waged war against the enemy openly and fearlessly, and that
Squeers covered his rascality, even at home, with a spice of his habitual
deceit; as if he really had a notion of some day or other being able to take
himself in, and persuade his own mind that he was a very good fellow.
    »But come,« said Squeers, interrupting the progress of some thoughts to this
effect in the mind of his usher, »let's go to the school-room; and lend me a
hand with my school-coat, will you?«
    Nicholas assisted his master to put on an old fustian shooting-jacket, which
he took down from a peg in the passage; and Squeers, arming himself with his
cane, led the way across a yard, to a door in the rear of the house.
    »There,« said the schoolmaster as they stepped in together; »this is our
shop, Nickleby!«
