‘Especially,’ observed Mrs. Browdie, looking very sly, ‘after what we know about past and gone love matters.’
‘We know, indeed!’ said Nicholas, shaking his head. ‘You behaved rather wickedly there, I suspect.’
‘O’ course she did,’ said John Browdie, passing his huge forefinger through one of his wife’s pretty ringlets, and looking very proud of her. ‘She wur always as skittish and full o’ tricks as a—’
‘Well, as a what?’ said his wife.
‘As a woman,’ returned John. ‘Ding! But I dinnot know ought else that cooms near it.’
‘You were speaking about Miss Squeers,’ said Nicholas, with the view of stopping some slight connubialities which had begun to pass between Mr. and Mrs. Browdie, and which rendered the position of a third party in some degree embarrassing, as occasioning him to feel rather in the way than otherwise.
‘Oh yes,’ rejoined Mrs. Browdie. ‘John ha’ done. John fixed tonight, because she had settled that she would go and drink tea with her father. And to make quite sure of there being nothing amiss, and of your being quite alone with us, he settled to go out there and fetch her home.’
‘That was a very good arrangement,’ said Nicholas, ‘though I am sorry to be the occasion of so much trouble.’
‘Not the least in the world,’ returned Mrs. Browdie; ‘for we have looked forward to see you—John and I have—with the greatest possible pleasure. Do you know, Mr. Nickleby,’ said Mrs. Browdie, with her archest smile, ‘that I really think Fanny Squeers was very fond of you?’
‘I am very much obliged to her,’ said Nicholas; ‘but upon my word, I never aspired to making any impression upon her virgin heart.’