observation that she might be fairly supposed
not to have lived in the world so long without knowing its ways,
communicated a great many subtle precepts applicable to the state of
courtship, and confirmed in their wisdom by her own personal experience.
Above all things she commended a strict maidenly reserve, as being
not only a very laudable thing in itself, but as tending materially
to strengthen and increase a lover's ardour. 'And I never,' added Mrs
Nickleby, 'was more delighted in my life than to observe last night,
my dear, that your good sense had already told you this.' With which
sentiment, and various hints of the pleasure she derived from the
knowledge that her daughter inherited so large an instalment of her own
excellent sense and discretion (to nearly the full measure of which she
might hope, with care, to succeed in time), Mrs Nickleby concluded a
very long and rather illegible letter.

Poor Kate was well-nigh distracted on the receipt of four
closely-written and closely-crossed sides of congratulation on the very
subject which had prevented her closing her eyes all night, and kept her
weeping and watching in her chamber; still worse and more trying was the
necessity of rendering herself agreeable to Mrs Wititterly, who, being
in low spirits after the fatigue of the preceding night, of course
expected her companion (else wherefore had she board and salary?) to be
in the best spirits possible. As to Mr Wititterly, he went about all day
in a tremor of delight at having shaken hands with a lord, and having
actually asked him to come and see him in his own house. The lord
himself, not being troubled to any inconvenient extent with the power
of thinking, regaled himself with the conversation of Messrs Pyke and
Pluck, who sharpened their wit by a plentiful indulgence in various
costly stimulants at his expense.

It was four in the afternoon--that is, the vulgar afternoon of the sun
and the clock--and Mrs Wititterly reclined, according to custom, on the
drawing-room sofa, while Kate read aloud a new novel in three volumes,
entitled 'The Lady Flabella,' which Alphonse the doubtful had procured
from the library that very morning. And it was a production admirably
suited to a lady labouring under Mrs Wititterly's complaint, seeing that
there was not a line in it, from beginning to end, which could, by the
most remote contingency, awaken the smallest excitement in any person
breathing.

Kate read on.

'"Cherize