dignity, not a little proud of her position.

At the theatre entrance there was more banging and more bustle, and
there were also Messrs Pyke and Pluck waiting to escort her to her box;
and so polite were they, that Mr Pyke threatened with many oaths to
'smifligate' a very old man with a lantern who accidentally stumbled
in her way--to the great terror of Mrs Nickleby, who, conjecturing
more from Mr Pyke's excitement than any previous acquaintance with the
etymology of the word that smifligation and bloodshed must be in
the main one and the same thing, was alarmed beyond expression, lest
something should occur. Fortunately, however, Mr Pyke confined himself
to mere verbal smifligation, and they reached their box with no more
serious interruption by the way, than a desire on the part of the same
pugnacious gentleman to 'smash' the assistant box-keeper for happening
to mistake the number.

Mrs Nickleby had scarcely been put away behind the curtain of the box in
an armchair, when Sir Mulberry and Lord Verisopht arrived, arrayed from
the crowns of their heads to the tips of their gloves, and from the
tips of their gloves to the toes of their boots, in the most elegant and
costly manner. Sir Mulberry was a little hoarser than on the previous
day, and Lord Verisopht looked rather sleepy and queer; from which
tokens, as well as from the circumstance of their both being to a
trifling extent unsteady upon their legs, Mrs Nickleby justly concluded
that they had taken dinner.

'We have been--we have been--toasting your lovely daughter, Mrs
Nickleby,' whispered Sir Mulberry, sitting down behind her.

'Oh, ho!' thought that knowing lady; 'wine in, truth out.--You are very
kind, Sir Mulberry.'

'No, no upon my soul!' replied Sir Mulberry Hawk. 'It's you that's kind,
upon my soul it is. It was so kind of you to come tonight.'

'So very kind of you to invite me, you mean, Sir Mulberry,' replied Mrs
Nickleby, tossing her head, and looking prodigiously sly.

'I am so anxious to know you, so anxious to cultivate your good opinion,
so desirous that there should be a delicious kind of harmonious family
understanding between us,' said Sir Mulberry, 'that you mustn't think
I'm disinterested in what I do. I'm infernal selfish; I am--upon my soul
I am.'

'I am sure you can't be selfish, Sir Mulberry!' replied Mrs Nickleby.
'You have much too open and generous a countenance for that.'

'What an extraordinary observer you are!' said S