scaping from a bear;--the mere
suddenness of the encounter made her faint away directly. Wait, though,'
added Mrs Nickleby, pausing to consider. 'Let me be sure I'm right. Was
it her hairdresser who had escaped from a bear, or was it a bear who had
escaped from her hairdresser's? I declare I can't remember just now, but
the hairdresser was a very handsome man, I know, and quite a gentleman
in his manners; so that it has nothing to do with the point of the
story.'

Mrs Nickleby having fallen imperceptibly into one of her retrospective
moods, improved in temper from that moment, and glided, by an easy
change of the conversation occasionally, into various other anecdotes,
no less remarkable for their strict application to the subject in hand.

'Mr Smike is from Yorkshire, Nicholas, my dear?' said Mrs Nickleby,
after dinner, and when she had been silent for some time.

'Certainly, mother,' replied Nicholas. 'I see you have not forgotten his
melancholy history.'

'O dear no,' cried Mrs Nickleby. 'Ah! melancholy, indeed. You don't
happen, Mr Smike, ever to have dined with the Grimbles of Grimble Hall,
somewhere in the North Riding, do you?' said the good lady, addressing
herself to him. 'A very proud man, Sir Thomas Grimble, with six grown-up
and most lovely daughters, and the finest park in the county.'

'My dear mother,' reasoned Nicholas, 'do you suppose that the
unfortunate outcast of a Yorkshire school was likely to receive many
cards of invitation from the nobility and gentry in the neighbourhood?'

'Really, my dear, I don't know why it should be so very extraordinary,'
said Mrs Nickleby. 'I know that when I was at school, I always went at
least twice every half-year to the Hawkinses at Taunton Vale, and they
are much richer than the Grimbles, and connected with them in marriage;
so you see it's not so very unlikely, after all.'

Having put down Nicholas in this triumphant manner, Mrs Nickleby was
suddenly seized with a forgetfulness of Smike's real name, and an
irresistible tendency to call him Mr Slammons; which circumstance she
attributed to the remarkable similarity of the two names in point of
sound both beginning with an S, and moreover being spelt with an M. But
whatever doubt there might be on this point, there was none as to his
being a most excellent listener; which circumstance had considerable
influence in placing them on the very best terms, and inducing Mrs
Nickleby to express the highest opinion of