if in mild deprecation of this outbreak. 'He is
cheap, my dear; the young man is very cheap.'

'Not a bit of it,' retorted Mrs Squeers.

'Five pound a year,' said Squeers.

'What of that; it's dear if you don't want him, isn't it?' replied his
wife.

'But we DO want him,' urged Squeers.

'I don't see that you want him any more than the dead,' said
Mrs Squeers. 'Don't tell me. You can put on the cards and in the
advertisements, "Education by Mr Wackford Squeers and able assistants,"
without having any assistants, can't you? Isn't it done every day by all
the masters about? I've no patience with you.'

'Haven't you!' said Squeers, sternly. 'Now I'll tell you what, Mrs
Squeers. In this matter of having a teacher, I'll take my own way, if
you please. A slave driver in the West Indies is allowed a man under
him, to see that his blacks don't run away, or get up a rebellion; and
I'll have a man under me to do the same with OUR blacks, till such time
as little Wackford is able to take charge of the school.'

'Am I to take care of the school when I grow up a man, father?' said
Wackford junior, suspending, in the excess of his delight, a vicious
kick which he was administering to his sister.

'You are, my son,' replied Mr Squeers, in a sentimental voice.

'Oh my eye, won't I give it to the boys!' exclaimed the interesting
child, grasping his father's cane. 'Oh, father, won't I make 'em squeak
again!'

It was a proud moment in Mr Squeers's life, when he witnessed that burst
of enthusiasm in his young child's mind, and saw in it a foreshadowing
of his future eminence. He pressed a penny into his hand, and gave
vent to his feelings (as did his exemplary wife also), in a shout of
approving laughter. The infantine appeal to their common sympathies,
at once restored cheerfulness to the conversation, and harmony to the
company.

'He's a nasty stuck-up monkey, that's what I consider him,' said Mrs
Squeers, reverting to Nicholas.

'Supposing he is,' said Squeers, 'he is as well stuck up in our
schoolroom as anywhere else, isn't he?--especially as he don't like it.'

'Well,' observed Mrs Squeers, 'there's something in that. I hope it'll
bring his pride down, and it shall be no fault of mine if it don't.'

Now, a proud usher in a Yorkshire school was such a very extraordinary
and unaccountable thing to hear of,--any usher at all being a novelty;
but a proud one, a being of whose existence the wildest imagination
could nev