, and play it in English, and save all this trouble
and expense.'

Nicholas smiled and pocketed the play.

'What are you going to do about your lodgings?' said Mr Crummles.

Nicholas could not help thinking that, for the first week, it would be
an uncommon convenience to have a turn-up bedstead in the pit, but he
merely remarked that he had not turned his thoughts that way.

'Come home with me then,' said Mr Crummles, 'and my boys shall go with
you after dinner, and show you the most likely place.'

The offer was not to be refused; Nicholas and Mr Crummles gave Mrs
Crummles an arm each, and walked up the street in stately array. Smike,
the boys, and the phenomenon, went home by a shorter cut, and Mrs
Grudden remained behind to take some cold Irish stew and a pint of
porter in the box-office.

Mrs Crummles trod the pavement as if she were going to immediate
execution with an animating consciousness of innocence, and that heroic
fortitude which virtue alone inspires. Mr Crummles, on the other hand,
assumed the look and gait of a hardened despot; but they both attracted
some notice from many of the passers-by, and when they heard a whisper
of 'Mr and Mrs Crummles!' or saw a little boy run back to stare them in
the face, the severe expression of their countenances relaxed, for they
felt it was popularity.

Mr Crummles lived in St Thomas's Street, at the house of one Bulph, a
pilot, who sported a boat-green door, with window-frames of the same
colour, and had the little finger of a drowned man on his parlour
mantelshelf, with other maritime and natural curiosities. He displayed
also a brass knocker, a brass plate, and a brass bell-handle, all very
bright and shining; and had a mast, with a vane on the top of it, in his
back yard.

'You are welcome,' said Mrs Crummles, turning round to Nicholas when
they reached the bow-windowed front room on the first floor.

Nicholas bowed his acknowledgments, and was unfeignedly glad to see the
cloth laid.

'We have but a shoulder of mutton with onion sauce,' said Mrs Crummles,
in the same charnel-house voice; 'but such as our dinner is, we beg you
to partake of it.'

'You are very good,' replied Nicholas, 'I shall do it ample justice.'

'Vincent,' said Mrs Crummles, 'what is the hour?'

'Five minutes past dinner-time,' said Mr Crummles.

Mrs Crummles rang the bell. 'Let the mutton and onion sauce appear.'

The slave who attended upon Mr Bulph's lodgers, disappeared, and