ut to murmur something, when her uncle stopped her,
very unceremoniously.

'We must try and get you apprenticed at some boarding-school,' said
Ralph. 'You have not been brought up too delicately for that, I hope?'

'No, indeed, uncle,' replied the weeping girl. 'I will try to do
anything that will gain me a home and bread.'

'Well, well,' said Ralph, a little softened, either by his niece's
beauty or her distress (stretch a point, and say the latter). 'You must
try it, and if the life is too hard, perhaps dressmaking or tambour-work
will come lighter. Have YOU ever done anything, sir?' (turning to his
nephew.)

'No,' replied Nicholas, bluntly.

'No, I thought not!' said Ralph. 'This is the way my brother brought up
his children, ma'am.'

'Nicholas has not long completed such education as his poor father could
give him,' rejoined Mrs Nickleby, 'and he was thinking of--'

'Of making something of him someday,' said Ralph. 'The old story; always
thinking, and never doing. If my brother had been a man of activity
and prudence, he might have left you a rich woman, ma'am: and if he had
turned his son into the world, as my father turned me, when I wasn't as
old as that boy by a year and a half, he would have been in a situation
to help you, instead of being a burden upon you, and increasing your
distress. My brother was a thoughtless, inconsiderate man, Mrs Nickleby,
and nobody, I am sure, can have better reason to feel that, than you.'

This appeal set the widow upon thinking that perhaps she might have made
a more successful venture with her one thousand pounds, and then she
began to reflect what a comfortable sum it would have been just then;
which dismal thoughts made her tears flow faster, and in the excess of
these griefs she (being a well-meaning woman enough, but weak withal)
fell first to deploring her hard fate, and then to remarking, with many
sobs, that to be sure she had been a slave to poor Nicholas, and had
often told him she might have married better (as indeed she had, very
often), and that she never knew in his lifetime how the money went, but
that if he had confided in her they might all have been better off that
day; with other bitter recollections common to most married ladies,
either during their coverture, or afterwards, or at both periods. Mrs
Nickleby concluded by lamenting that the dear departed had never deigned
to profit by her advice, save on one occasion; which was a strictly
veracious sta