y Mrs Nickleby should have expressed surprise when, candles
being at length brought in, Kate's bright eyes were unable to bear the
light which obliged her to avert her face, and even to leave the room
for some short time; because, when one has sat in the dark so long,
candles ARE dazzling, and nothing can be more strictly natural than that
such results should be produced, as all well-informed young people know.
For that matter, old people know it too, or did know it once, but they
forget these things sometimes, and more's the pity.

The good lady's surprise, however, did not end here. It was greatly
increased when it was discovered that Kate had not the least appetite
for supper: a discovery so alarming that there is no knowing in what
unaccountable efforts of oratory Mrs Nickleby's apprehensions might have
been vented, if the general attention had not been attracted, at the
moment, by a very strange and uncommon noise, proceeding, as the pale
and trembling servant girl affirmed, and as everybody's sense of hearing
seemed to affirm also, 'right down' the chimney of the adjoining room.

It being quite plain to the comprehension of all present that, however
extraordinary and improbable it might appear, the noise did nevertheless
proceed from the chimney in question; and the noise (which was a strange
compound of various shuffling, sliding, rumbling, and struggling sounds,
all muffled by the chimney) still continuing, Frank Cheeryble caught
up a candle, and Tim Linkinwater the tongs, and they would have very
quickly ascertained the cause of this disturbance if Mrs Nickleby
had not been taken very faint, and declined being left behind, on any
account. This produced a short remonstrance, which terminated in their
all proceeding to the troubled chamber in a body, excepting only Miss La
Creevy, who, as the servant girl volunteered a confession of having been
subject to fits in her infancy, remained with her to give the alarm and
apply restoratives, in case of extremity.

Advancing to the door of the mysterious apartment, they were not
a little surprised to hear a human voice, chanting with a highly
elaborated expression of melancholy, and in tones of suffocation which
a human voice might have produced from under five or six feather-beds
of the best quality, the once popular air of 'Has she then failed in
her truth, the beautiful maid I adore?' Nor, on bursting into the room
without demanding a parley, was their astonishment l