'Everything, my dear sir.'

'Nothing, my dear sir,' retorted the manager, with evident impatience.
'Do you understand French?'

'Perfectly well.'

'Very good,' said the manager, opening the table drawer, and giving a
roll of paper from it to Nicholas. 'There! Just turn that into English,
and put your name on the title-page. Damn me,' said Mr Crummles,
angrily, 'if I haven't often said that I wouldn't have a man or woman in
my company that wasn't master of the language, so that they might learn
it from the original, and play it in English, and save all this trouble
and expense.'

Nicholas smiled and pocketed the play.

'What are you going to do about your lodgings?' said Mr Crummles.

Nicholas could not help thinking that, for the first week, it would be
an uncommon convenience to have a turn-up bedstead in the pit, but he
merely remarked that he had not turned his thoughts that way.

'Come home with me then,' said Mr Crummles, 'and my boys shall go with
you after dinner, and show you the most likely place.'

The offer was not to be refused; Nicholas and Mr Crummles gave Mrs
Crummles an arm each, and walked up the street in stately array. Smike,
the boys, and the phenomenon, went home by a shorter cut, and Mrs