‘You felt it your duty immediately to come to me, and tell me what your sister no doubt acquainted you with?’

‘It’s clear that there has been a Providence in it, sir,’ said Mr Snawley, casting down his eyes with an air of humility, and elevating his fork, with a bit of lobster on the top of it, towards the ceiling.

‘Late!’ cried Mrs Nickleby, with a sharp thin laugh, and one little cough at the end, like a note of admiration expressed. ‘This is quite early for us. We used to keep such hours! Twelve, one, two, three o’clock was nothing to us. Balls, dinners, card–parties! Never were such rakes as the people about where we used to live. I often think now, I am sure, that how we ever could go through with it is quite astonishing, and that is just the evil of having a large connection and being a great deal sought after, which I would recommend all young married people steadily to resist; though of course, and it’s perfectly clear, and a very happy thing too, I think, that very few young married people can be exposed to such temptations. There was one family in particular, that used to live about a mile from us—not straight down the road, but turning sharp off to the left by the turnpike where the Plymouth mail ran over the donkey—that were quite extraordinary people for giving the most extravagant parties, with artificial flowers and champagne, and variegated lamps, and, in short, every delicacy of eating and drinking that the most singular epicure could possibly require. I don’t think that there ever were such people as those Peltiroguses. You remember the Peltiroguses, Kate?’