t Smike to announce his coming.

His first step now was to write a letter to Ralph, telling him he at
last knew what a villain he was, and that he and his mother and sister
cast him off for ever, with shame that they had ever asked his aid. The
next day Nicholas took Kate from the Wititterly house and his mother
from her poor lodging, and rented them rooms in another part of the
city. Then he started out to find some employment for himself.

For a long time he was unsuccessful, but one day (and a very lucky day
Nicholas thought it ever afterward) he met on the street a round-faced,
jolly-looking old gentleman, with whom he fell into conversation, and
before long, almost without knowing it, he had told him all his
troubles.

This old gentleman was named Cheeryble, and the firm to which he
belonged was Cheeryble Brothers. He and his twin brother had come to
London, barefoot, when they were boys, and though they had grown very
rich, they had never forgotten what it was to be poor and wretched. The
old gentleman asked Nicholas to come with him to his office and there
they met the other Mr. Cheeryble.

Nicholas could scarcely tell the two brothers apart, for they were like
as two peas. They were precisely the same size, wore clothes just alike
and laughed in the same key. Each had even lost exactly the same number
of teeth. They were loved by everybody, for they went through life
doing good wherever they could. They both liked Nicholas at once, and
the upshot was that they gave him a position in their counting-room and
rented a pleasant cottage near by for his mother and Kate.

So there Nicholas took up work and they were all happy and
comfortable--very different from Ralph Nickleby, the money-lender, in
his fine house, with only the memory of his own wickedness for company.

IV

WHAT HAPPENED TO EVERYBODY

Ralph Nickleby's hatred had been growing day by day. As he could not
harm Nicholas now, he tried to hurt him through Smike. He sent for
Squeers, and the latter, finding Smike alone one day on the street,
seized him, put him in a coach and started to take him back to Dotheboys
Hall. But luckily his victim escaped and got back to London.

Then Ralph formed a wicked plot to get Smike surely into their hands. He
hired a man to claim that he was the boy's father, who had first taken
him to Squeers's school. Squeers, too, swore to this lying tale. But the
Cheeryble brothers suspected the story, and when Ralph saw th