ortsmouth, when Mr Crummles pulled up.

'We'll get down here,' said the manager, 'and the boys will take him
round to the stable, and call at my lodgings with the luggage. You had
better let yours be taken there, for the present.'

Thanking Mr Vincent Crummles for his obliging offer, Nicholas jumped
out, and, giving Smike his arm, accompanied the manager up High Street
on their way to the theatre; feeling nervous and uncomfortable enough at
the prospect of an immediate introduction to a scene so new to him.

They passed a great many bills, pasted against the walls and displayed
in windows, wherein the names of Mr Vincent Crummles, Mrs Vincent
Crummles, Master Crummles, Master P. Crummles, and Miss Crummles, were
printed in very large letters, and everything else in very small ones;
and, turning at length into an entry, in which was a strong smell of
orange-peel and lamp-oil, with an under-current of sawdust, groped their
way through a dark passage, and, descending a step or two, threaded a
little maze of canvas screens and paint pots, and emerged upon the stage
of the Portsmouth Theatre.

'Here we are,' said Mr Crummles.

It was not very light, but Nicholas found himself close to the first
entrance on the prompt side, among bare walls, dusty scenes, mildewed
clouds, heavily daubed draperies, and dirty floors. He looked about him;
ceiling, pit, boxes, gallery, orchestra, fittings, and decorations of
every kind,--all looked coarse, cold, gloomy, and wretched.

'Is this a theatre?' whispered Smike, in amazement; 'I thought it was a
blaze of light and finery.'

'Why, so it is,' replied Nicholas, hardly less surprised; 'but not by
day, Smike--not by day.'

The manager's voice recalled him from a more careful inspection of the
building, to the opposite side of the proscenium, where, at a small
mahogany table with rickety legs and of an oblong shape, sat a stout,
portly female, apparently between forty and fifty, in a tarnished silk
cloak, with her bonnet dangling by the strings in her hand, and her hair
(of which she had a great quantity) braided in a large festoon over each
temple.

'Mr Johnson,' said the manager (for Nicholas had given the name
which Newman Noggs had bestowed upon him in his conversation with Mrs
Kenwigs), 'let me introduce Mrs Vincent Crummles.'

'I am glad to see you, sir,' said Mrs Vincent Crummles, in a sepulchral
voice. 'I am very glad to see you, and still more happy to hail you as a
promi