MRS. NICKLEBY IN THE CHAIR.
A Song of Sympathetic Suggestion.
["Poor Mrs. Nickleby, who had at no time been remarkable for the possession of a very clear understanding, had been reduced by the late changes in affairs to a most complicated state of perplexity....
"'I don't know what to think, one way or other, my dear,' said Mrs. Nickleby; 'Nicholas is so violent, and your uncle has so much composure, that I can only hear what he says, and not what Nicholas does. Never mind—don't let us talk any more about it.'...
"Now Mrs. Nickleby was not the sort of person to be told anything in a hurry, or rather to comprehend anything of peculiar delicacy or importance on a short notice....
"'Anybody who had come in upon us suddenly would have supposed that I was confusing and distracting, instead of making things plainer; upon my word they would.'...
"'I am very sorry indeed,' said Mrs. Nickleby. 'I am very sorry indeed for all this. I really don't know what would be the best to do, and that's the truth;... but if it could be settled in any friendly manner—and some fair arrangement was come to, so that we undertook to have fish twice a week, and a pudding once, or a dumpling, or something of that sort, I do think it might be very satisfactory and pleasant for all parties.'
"This compromise, which was proposed with abundance of tears and sighs, not exactly meeting the point at issue, nobody took any notice of it."
Dickens's "Nicholas Nickleby.">[
Air—"Nickledy Nod."
Oh! where are we next to be carried,
My own dear Nickleby Nod?
We're worried, and hurried, and harried!
In pickle has no one a rod?
Obstruction's becoming a bore;