nd
her, appeals, as a last resource, to her Uncle for Protection

The ensuing morning brought reflection with it, as morning usually
does; but widely different was the train of thought it awakened in the
different persons who had been so unexpectedly brought together on the
preceding evening, by the active agency of Messrs Pyke and Pluck.

The reflections of Sir Mulberry Hawk--if such a term can be applied to
the thoughts of the systematic and calculating man of dissipation, whose
joys, regrets, pains, and pleasures, are all of self, and who would seem
to retain nothing of the intellectual faculty but the power to debase
himself, and to degrade the very nature whose outward semblance he
wears--the reflections of Sir Mulberry Hawk turned upon Kate Nickleby,
and were, in brief, that she was undoubtedly handsome; that her coyness
MUST be easily conquerable by a man of his address and experience, and
that the pursuit was one which could not fail to redound to his credit,
and greatly to enhance his reputation with the world. And lest this last
consideration--no mean or secondary one with Sir Mulberry--should sound
strangely in the ears of some, let it be remembered that most men live
in a world of their own, and that in that limited circle alone are they
ambitious for distinction and applause. Sir Mulberry's world was peopled
with profligates, and he acted accordingly.

Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most
extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It
is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief
actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the
world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they
do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take
place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement.

The reflections of Mrs Nickleby were of the proudest and most complacent
kind; and under the influence of her very agreeable delusion she
straightway sat down and indited a long letter to Kate, in which she
expressed her entire approval of the admirable choice she had made, and
extolled Sir Mulberry to the skies; asserting, for the more complete
satisfaction of her daughter's feelings, that he was precisely the
individual whom she (Mrs Nickleby) would have chosen for her son-in-law,
if she had had the picking and choosing from all mankind. The good lady
then, with the preliminary