making an effort to tear her front
off.

'Oh no, no,' replied the chorus, 'pray don't say so; don't now!'

'Have I deserved to be called an elderly person?' screamed Miss Knag,
wrestling with the supernumeraries.

'Don't think of such things, dear,' answered the chorus.

'I hate her,' cried Miss Knag; 'I detest and hate her. Never let her
speak to me again; never let anybody who is a friend of mine speak to
her; a slut, a hussy, an impudent artful hussy!' Having denounced the
object of her wrath, in these terms, Miss Knag screamed once, hiccuped
thrice, gurgled in her throat several times, slumbered, shivered, woke,
came to, composed her head-dress, and declared herself quite well again.

Poor Kate had regarded these proceedings, at first, in perfect
bewilderment. She had then turned red and pale by turns, and once
or twice essayed to speak; but, as the true motives of this altered
behaviour developed themselves, she retired a few paces, and looked
calmly on without deigning a reply. Nevertheless, although she walked
proudly to her seat, and turned her back upon the group of little
satellites who clustered round their ruling planet in the remotest
corner of the room, she gave way, in secret, to some such bitter tears
as would have gladdened Miss Knag's inmost soul, if she could have seen
them fall.

CHAPTER 19

Descriptive of a Dinner at Mr Ralph Nickleby's, and of the Manner in
which the Company entertained themselves, before Dinner, at Dinner, and
after Dinner.

The bile and rancour of the worthy Miss Knag undergoing no diminution
during the remainder of the week, but rather augmenting with every
successive hour; and the honest ire of all the young ladies rising, or
seeming to rise, in exact proportion to the good spinster's indignation,
and both waxing very hot every time Miss Nickleby was called upstairs;
it will be readily imagined that that young lady's daily life was
none of the most cheerful or enviable kind. She hailed the arrival of
Saturday night, as a prisoner would a few delicious hours' respite from
slow and wearing torture, and felt that the poor pittance for her first
week's labour would have been dearly and hardly earned, had its amount
been trebled.

When she joined her mother, as usual, at the street corner, she was not
a little surprised to find her in conversation with Mr Ralph Nickleby;
but her surprise was soon redoubled, no less by the matter of their
conversation, than by the