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Updated: June 17, 2025
Mr Kenwigs remembered that he had had his suspicions, but did not wonder why Mrs Kenwigs had not had hers, as she was all chastity, purity, and truth, and Henrietta all baseness, falsehood, and deceit.
"We've got a private master comes to teach us at home, but we ain't proud, because Ma says it's sinful," quoth Morleena Kenwigs, under her mother's instructions, when Nicholas Nickleby gave her French lessons. The infant daughter of a country clergyman, drinking tea in the nursery of the episcopal Palace, boasted that at the Vicarage they had a hen which laid an egg every day.
Excusing himself, in these terms, from joining in the festivities, Nicholas took a most winning farewell of Mrs Kenwigs and the other ladies, and retired, after making a very extraordinary impression upon the company. 'What a delightful young man! cried Mrs Kenwigs. 'Uncommon gentlemanly, really, said Mr Kenwigs. 'Don't you think so, Mr Lillyvick?
'Ah! it won't bear thinking of, indeed, cried the matrons generally; 'but it'll all come home to him, never fear. Mr Kenwigs looked darkly upon the ladies, as if he would prefer its all coming home to HIM, as there was nothing to be got by it; but he said nothing, and resting his head upon his hand, subsided into a kind of doze.
Now, considered as an abstract circumstance, there was no more obvious cause or reason why Mr Kenwigs should take the trouble of muffling this particular knocker, than there would have been for his muffling the knocker of any nobleman or gentleman resident ten miles off; because, for the greater convenience of the numerous lodgers, the street-door always stood wide open, and the knocker was never used at all.
Uncanny though the remark perhaps, I am not sure I wasn't thus more interested in the pulse of our party, under my tiny recording thumb, than in the beat of the drama and the shock of its opposed forces vivid and touching as the contrast was then found for instance between the tragi-comical Topsy, the slave-girl clad in a pinafore of sackcloth and destined to become for Anglo-Saxon millions the type of the absolute in the artless, and her little mistress the blonde Eva, a figure rather in the Kenwigs tradition of pantalettes and pigtails, whom I recall as perching quite suicidally, with her elbows out and a preliminary shriek, on that bulwark of the Mississippi steamboat which was to facilitate her all but fatal immersion in the flood.
The Queen, whose ample undulations also reminded one of the high seas, was on his right; while in perfect gradation on her right again were four princesses in short frocks and long trousers, with plaited tails tied with blue ribbon, like the Miss Kenwigs. A little side dispute arose between the stiff old General and the Foreign Minister as to whose right it was to present us.
Message from the country! said Mr Kenwigs, ruminating; 'that's curious. I don't know anybody in the country. 'Miss Petowker, suggested Nicholas. 'Oh! from her, is it? said Mr Kenwigs. 'Oh dear, yes. Ah! Mrs Kenwigs will be glad to hear from her. Henrietta Petowker, eh? How odd things come about, now! That you should have met her in the country! Well!
She's the very picter of her. Having thus directed the general attention to the young lady in question, the married lady embraced the opportunity of taking another sip of the brandy-and-water and a pretty long sip too. 'Yes! there is a likeness, said Mr Kenwigs, after some reflection. 'But such a woman as Mrs Kenwigs was, afore she was married! Good gracious, such a woman!
Kenwigs that she felt impelled to propose through the friend whom he had been visiting, that he should instruct the four little Kenwigses in the French language at the weekly stipend of five shillings; being at the rate of one shilling per week, per each Miss Kenwigs, and one shilling over until such time as the baby might be able to take it out in grammar.
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