ied, covering his face with his cracked and
horny hands. 'My heart will break. It will, it will.'

'Hush!' said Nicholas, laying his hand upon his shoulder. 'Be a man; you
are nearly one by years, God help you.'

'By years!' cried Smike. 'Oh dear, dear, how many of them! How many of
them since I was a little child, younger than any that are here now!
Where are they all!'

'Whom do you speak of?' inquired Nicholas, wishing to rouse the poor
half-witted creature to reason. 'Tell me.'

'My friends,' he replied, 'myself--my--oh! what sufferings mine have
been!'

'There is always hope,' said Nicholas; he knew not what to say.

'No,' rejoined the other, 'no; none for me. Do you remember the boy that
died here?'

'I was not here, you know,' said Nicholas gently; 'but what of him?'

'Why,' replied the youth, drawing closer to his questioner's side, 'I
was with him at night, and when it was all silent he cried no more for
friends he wished to come and sit with him, but began to see faces round
his bed that came from home; he said they smiled, and talked to him; and
he died at last lifting his head to kiss them. Do you hear?'

'Yes, yes,' rejoined Nicholas.

'What faces will smile on me when I die!' cried his companion,
shivering. 'Who will talk to me in those long nights! They cannot come
from home; they would frighten me, if they did, for I don't know what it
is, and shouldn't know them. Pain and fear, pain and fear for me, alive
or dead. No hope, no hope!'

The bell rang to bed: and the boy, subsiding at the sound into his usual
listless state, crept away as if anxious to avoid notice. It was with a
heavy heart that Nicholas soon afterwards--no, not retired; there was no
retirement there--followed--to his dirty and crowded dormitory.

CHAPTER 9

Of Miss Squeers, Mrs Squeers, Master Squeers, and Mr Squeers; and of
various Matters and Persons connected no less with the Squeerses than
Nicholas Nickleby

When Mr Squeers left the schoolroom for the night, he betook himself, as
has been before remarked, to his own fireside, which was situated--not
in the room in which Nicholas had supped on the night of his arrival,
but in a smaller apartment in the rear of the premises, where his lady
wife, his amiable son, and accomplished daughter, were in the full
enjoyment of each other's society; Mrs Squeers being engaged in the
matronly pursuit of stocking-darning; and the young lady and gentleman
being occupied in the