‘They are here now,’ said Kate, rising and hurrying away.
‘Miss Nickleby!’ cried Mrs. Wititterly, perfectly aghast at a companion’s attempting to quit the room, without her permission first had and obtained. ‘Pray don’t think of going.’
‘You are very good!’ replied Kate. ‘But—’
‘For goodness’ sake, don’t agitate me by making me speak so much,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, with great sharpness. ‘Dear me, Miss Nickleby, I beg—’
It was in vain for Kate to protest that she was unwell, for the footsteps of the knockers, whoever they were, were already on the stairs. She resumed her seat, and had scarcely done so, when the doubtful page darted into the room and announced, Mr. Pyke, and Mr. Pluck, and Lord Verisopht, and Sir Mulberry Hawk, all at one burst.
‘The most extraordinary thing in the world,’ said Mr. Pluck, saluting both ladies with the utmost cordiality; ‘the most extraordinary thing. As Lord Frederick and Sir Mulberry drove up to the door, Pyke and I had that instant knocked.’
‘That instant knocked,’ said Pyke.
‘No matter how you came, so that you are here,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, who, by dint of lying on the same sofa for three years and a half, had got up quite a little pantomime of graceful attitudes, and now threw herself into the most striking of the whole series, to astonish the visitors. ‘I am delighted, I am sure.’
‘And how is Miss Nickleby?’ said Sir Mulberry Hawk, accosting Kate, in a low voice—not so low, however, but that it reached the ears of Mrs Wititterly.
‘Why, she complains of suffering from the fright of last night,’ said the lady. ‘I am sure I don’t wonder at it, for my nerves are quite torn to pieces.’