'It's only one of our young ladies and her mother. Mrs and Miss
Nickleby.'

'Oh, indeed!' said Mr Mortimer Knag. 'Ah!'

Having given utterance to these ejaculations with a very profound
and thoughtful air, Mr Knag slowly snuffed two kitchen candles on the
counter, and two more in the window, and then snuffed himself from a box
in his waistcoat pocket.

There was something very impressive in the ghostly air with which
all this was done; and as Mr Knag was a tall lank gentleman of solemn
features, wearing spectacles, and garnished with much less hair than
a gentleman bordering on forty, or thereabouts, usually boasts, Mrs
Nickleby whispered her daughter that she thought he must be literary.

'Past ten,' said Mr Knag, consulting his watch. 'Thomas, close the
warehouse.'

Thomas was a boy nearly half as tall as a shutter, and the warehouse was
a shop about the size of three hackney coaches.

'Ah!' said Mr Knag once more, heaving a deep sigh as he restored to its
parent shelf the book he had been reading. 'Well--yes--I believe supper
is ready, sister.'

With another sigh Mr Knag took up the kitchen candles from the counter,
and preceded the ladies with mournful steps to a back-parlour, where a
charwoman, employed in the absence of the sick servant, and remunerated
with certain eighteenpences to be deducted from her wages due, was