queers's habit of getting down at nearly every
stage--"to stretch his legs, he said,--and as he always came back with
a very red nose, and composed himself to sleep directly, the stretching
seemed to answer." Immediately on the wayfarers' arrival at Dotheboys,
Mrs. Squeers, arrayed in a dimity night-jacket, herself a head taller
than Mr. Squeers, was always introduced with great effect, as seizing
her Squeery by the throat and giving him two loud kisses in rapid
succession, like a postman's knock. The audience then scarcely had time
to laugh over the interchange of questions and answers between the happy
couple, as to the condition of the cows and pigs, and, last of all,
the boys, ending with Madame's intimation that "young Pitcher's had a
fever," followed up by Squeers's characteristic exclamation, "No! damn
that chap, he's always at something of that sort"--when there came
the first glimpse of poor Smike, in a skeleton suit, and large boots
originally made for tops, too patched and ragged now for a beggar;
around his throat "a tattered child's frill only half concealed by a
coarse man's neckerchief." Anxiously observing Squeers, as he emptied
his overcoat of letters and papers, the boy did this, we were told, with
an air so dispirited and hopeless, that Nicholas could hardly bear to
watch him. "Have you--did anybody--has nothing been heard--about me?"
were then (in the faintest, frightened voice!) the first stammered
utterances of the wretched drudge. Bullied into silence by the brutal
schoolmaster, Smike limped away with a vacant smile, when we heard the
female scoundrel in the dimity night-jacket saying,--"I'll tell you
what, Squeers, I think that young chap's turning silly."

Inducted into the loathsome school-room on the following morning by
Squeers himself, Nicholas, first of all, we were informed, witnessed
the manner in which that arrant rogue presided over "the first class in
English spelling and philosophy," practically illustrating his mode of
tuition by setting the scholars to clean the w-i-n win, d-e-r-s ders,
winders--to weed the garden--to rub down the horse, or get rubbed
down themselves if they didn't do it well. Nicholas assisted in the
afternoon, moreover, at the report given by Mr. Squeers on his return
homewards after his half-yearly visit to the metropolis. Beginning,
though this last-mentioned part of the Reading did, with Squeers's
ferocious slash on the desk with his cane, and his announcement,