Overpowered by this agonising thought, Mrs Nickleby shook her head, in a
melancholy manner, and applied her handkerchief to her eyes.

I don't want them, mama, indeed,' said Kate. 'Forget that you ever had
them.'

'Lord, Kate, my dear,' rejoined Mrs Nickleby, pettishly, 'how like a
child you talk! Four-and-twenty silver tea-spoons, brother-in-law,
two gravies, four salts, all the amethysts--necklace, brooch, and
ear-rings--all made away with, at the same time, and I saying, almost
on my bended knees, to that poor good soul, "Why don't you do something,
Nicholas? Why don't you make some arrangement?" I am sure that anybody
who was about us at that time, will do me the justice to own, that if
I said that once, I said it fifty times a day. Didn't I, Kate, my dear?
Did I ever lose an opportunity of impressing it on your poor papa?'

'No, no, mama, never,' replied Kate. And to do Mrs Nickleby justice, she
never had lost--and to do married ladies as a body justice, they seldom
do lose--any occasion of inculcating similar golden percepts, whose only
blemish is, the slight degree of vagueness and uncertainty in which they
are usually enveloped.

'Ah!' said Mrs Nickleby, with great fervour, 'if my advice had been
taken at the beginning--Well, I have always done MY duty, and that's
some comfort.'

When she had arrived at this reflection, Mrs Nickleby sighed, rubbed her
hands, cast up her eyes, and finally assumed a look of meek composure;
thus importing that she was a persecuted saint, but that she wouldn't
trouble her hearers by mentioning a circumstance which must be so