been--ah! the wife of Tim Linkinwater himself,
sir!'

Pursuing this encomium upon the poor follower with such energy and
relish as no words can describe, brother Charles leant back in his
chair, and delivered the remainder of his relation with greater
composure.

It was in substance this: That proudly resisting all offers of permanent
aid and support from her late mother's friends, because they were made
conditional upon her quitting the wretched man, her father, who had no
friends left, and shrinking with instinctive delicacy from appealing
in their behalf to that true and noble heart which he hated, and
had, through its greatest and purest goodness, deeply wronged by
misconstruction and ill report, this young girl had struggled alone and
unassisted to maintain him by the labour of her hands. That through the
utmost depths of poverty and affliction she had toiled, never turning
aside for an instant from her task, never wearied by the petulant gloom
of a sick man sustained by no consoling recollections of the past or
hopes of the future; never repining for the comforts she had rejected,
or bewailing the hard lot she had voluntarily incurred. That every
little accomplishment she had acquired in happier days had been put into
requisition for this purpose, and directed to this one end. That for
two long years, toiling by day and often too by night, working at the
needle, the pencil, and the pen, and submitting, as a daily governess,
to such caprices and indignities as women (with daughters too) too often
love to inflict upon their own sex when they serve in such capacities,
as though in jealousy of the superior intelligence which they are
necessitated to employ,--indignities, in ninety-nine cases out of
every hundred, heaped upon persons immeasurably and incalculably their
betters, but outweighing in comparison any that the most heartless
blackleg would put upon his groom--that for two long years, by dint
of labouring in all these capacities and wearying in none, she had not
succeeded in the sole aim and object of her life, but that, overwhelmed
by accumulated difficulties and disappointments, she had been compelled
to seek out her mother's old friend, and, with a bursting heart, to
confide in him at last.

'If I had been poor,' said brother Charles, with sparkling eyes; 'if
I had been poor, Mr Nickleby, my dear sir, which thank God I am not,
I would have denied myself (of course anybody would under such
circumstances)