 father, who had no friends left, and
shrinking with instinctive delicacy from appealing in their behalf to that true
and noble heart which he hated, and had, through its greatest and purest
goodness, deeply wronged by misconstruction and ill report, this young girl had
struggled alone and unassisted to maintain him by the labour of her hands. That
through the utmost depths of poverty and affliction she had toiled, never
turning aside for an instant from her task, never wearied by the petulant gloom
of a sick man sustained by no consoling recollections of the past or hopes of
the future; never repining for the comforts she had rejected, or bewailing the
hard lot she had voluntarily incurred. That every little accomplishment she had
acquired in happier days had been put into requisition for this purpose, and
directed to this one end. That for two long years, toiling by day and often too
by night, working at the needle, the pencil, and the pen, and submitting, as a
daily governess, to such caprices and indignities as women (with daughters too)
too often love to inflict upon their own sex when they serve in such capacities,
as though in jealousy of the superior intelligence which they are necessitated
to employ, - indignities, in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred, heaped upon
persons immeasurably and incalculably their betters, but outweighing in
comparison any that the most heartless blackleg would put upon his groom - that
for two long years, by dint of labouring in all these capacities and wearying in
none, she had not succeeded in the sole aim and object of her life, but that,
overwhelmed by accumulated difficulties and disappointments, she had been
compelled to seek out her mother's old friend, and, with a bursting heart, to
confide in him at last.
    »If I had been poor,« said brother Charles, with sparkling eyes; »If I had
been poor, Mr. Nickleby, my dear sir, which thank God I am not, I would have
denied myself (of course anybody would under such circumstances) the commonest
necessaries of life, to help her. As it is, the task is a difficult one. If her
father were dead, nothing could be easier, for then she should share and cheer
the happiest home that brother Ned and I could have, as if she were our child or
sister. But he is still alive. Nobody can help him; that has been tried a
thousand times; he was not abandoned by all without good cause, I know.«
    »Cannot she be persuaded to --« Nicholas hesitated when he
