NICHOLAS NICKLEBY
I
NICHOLAS AT DOTHEBOYS HALL
Once on a time, in England, there were two brothers named Nickleby who had grown up to be very different men. Ralph was a rich and miserly money-lender who gained his wealth by persecuting the poor of London—a thin, cold-hearted, crafty man with a cruel smile. The other, who lived in the country, was generous but poor, so that when he died he left his wife and two children, Nicholas and Kate, with hardly a penny to keep them from starving.
In their trouble the mother decided to go and try to obtain help from her husband's brother, Ralph Nickleby.
Ralph was angry when he learned they had come to London, for he loved his gold better than anything else in the world. He lived in Golden Square, a very rich part of the city, in a great fine house, all alone save for one servant, and he kept only one clerk.
This clerk, who was named Noggs, had one glass eye and long, bony fingers which he had an uncomfortable habit of cracking together when he spoke to any one. He had once been rich, but he had given his money to Ralph Nickleby to invest for him, and the money-lender had ended by getting it all, so that the poor man at last had to become the other's clerk. When he first saw Nicholas and Kate, Noggs was sorry enough for them, because he knew it would be little help they would get from their stingy uncle.
Nicholas was proud-mettled, and his very bearing angered the money-lender. He called him a young puppy, and a pauper besides, to which Nicholas replied with heat and spirit. His mother succeeded in smoothing things over for the time, and though Ralph Nickleby from that moment hated the boy, he grudgingly promised her to get him a situation as a teacher.