iny hair,
brushed straight up from his forehead. His sleeves were too long and his
trousers too short, and he carried a leather whip about in his pocket to
punish the boys with.

Mrs. Squeers was a fat woman, who wore a soiled dressing-gown, kept her
hair in curl papers all day, and always had a yellow handkerchief tied
around her neck. She was as cruel as her husband. They had one daughter
and a son named Wackford. The latter they kept as plump as could be, so
he would serve as an advertisement of the school; the rest of the boys,
however, were pale and thin.

No wonder, for they got almost nothing to eat. For dinner all they had
was a bowl of thin porridge with a wedge of bread for a spoon. When they
had eaten the porridge they ate the spoon. Once a week they were forced
to swallow a dreadful mixture of brimstone and sulphur, because this
dose took away their appetites so that they ate less for several days
afterward. They were made to sleep five in a bed, and were poorly
clothed, for whenever a new boy came Mrs. Squeers took his clothes away
from him for Wackford, and made the new boy wear any old ones she could
find. They were allowed to write only letters telling how happy they
were there, and when letters came for any of them, Mrs. Squeers opened
them first and took for herself any money that they contained.

There was no attempt at teaching at Dotheboys Hall. The books were dirty
and torn and the classes were scarecrows. All the boys were made to work
hard at chores about the place, and were flogged almost every day, so
that their lives were miserable. What Squeers wanted was the money
their guardians paid him for keeping them.

This was the kind of school for which Nicholas found himself hired at
very low wages as a teacher.

He knew nothing about it yet, however, and thought himself lucky and his
uncle kind as he bade his mother and Kate good-by and took the coach for
Dotheboys Hall. Noggs, Ralph Nickleby's one-eyed clerk, was there to see
him off, and put a letter into his hand as he started. Nicholas was so
sad at leaving the two he loved best in the world, that he put it into
his pocket and for the time forgot all about it.

On his arrival next day Nicholas's heart sank into his boots. When he
saw the boys gathered in the barn, which served for a school-room, he
was ready to die with shame and disgust to think he was to be a teacher
in such a place.

But he had no money to take him back to London, an