`Say nothing; not a word, not a word, my dearest madam,' urged Mr Pluck. `Mrs Nickleby,' said that excellent gentleman, lowering his voice, `there is the most trifling, the most excusable breach of confidence in what I am about to say; and yet if my friend Pyke there overheard it--such is that man's delicate sense of honour, Mrs Nickleby--he'd have me out before dinner-time.'

Mrs Nickleby cast an apprehensive glance at the warlike Pyke, who had walked to the window; and Mr Pluck, squeezing her hand, went on--

`Your daughter has made a conquest--a conquest on which I may congratulate you. Sir Mulberry, my dear ma'am, Sir Mulberry is her devoted slave. Hem!'

`Hah!' cried Mr Pyke at this juncture, snatching something from the chimney-piece with a theatrical air. `What is this! what do I behold!'

`What do you behold, my dear fellow?' asked Mr Pluck.

`It is the face, the countenance, the expression,' cried Mr Pyke, falling into his chair with a miniature in his hand; `feebly portrayed, imperfectly caught, but still the face, the countenance, the expression.'

`I recognise it at this distance!' exclaimed Mr Pluck in a fit of enthusiasm. `Is it not, my dear madam, the faint similitude of--'

`It is my daughter's portrait,' said Mrs Nickleby, with great pride. And so it was. And little Miss La Creevy had brought it home for inspection only two nights before.

Mr Pyke no sooner ascertained that he was quite right in his conjecture, than he launched into the most extravagant encomiums of the divine original; and in the warmth of his enthusiasm kissed the picture a thousand times, while Mr Pluck pressed Mrs Nickleby's hand to his heart, and congratulated her on the possession of such a daughter, with so much earnestness and affection, that the tears stood, or seemed to stand, in his eyes. Poor Mrs Nickleby, who had listened in a state of enviable complacency at first, became at length quite overpowered by these tokens of regard for, and attachment to, the family; and even the servant girl, who had peeped in at the door, remained rooted to the spot in astonishment at the ecstasies of the two friendly visitors.

By degrees these raptures subsided, and Mrs Nickleby went on to entertain her guests with a lament over her fallen fortunes, and a picturesque account of her old house in the country: comprising a full description of the different apartments, not forgetting the little storeroom, and a lively recollection of how many steps you went down to get into the garden, and which way you turned when you came out at the parlour door, and what capital fixtures there were in the kitchen. This last reflection naturally conducted her into the wash-house, where she stumbled upon the brewing utensils, among which she might have wandered for an hour, if the mere mention of those implements had not, by an association of ideas, instantly reminded Mr Pyke that he was `amazing thirsty.'

`And I'll tell you what,' said Mr Pyke; `if you'll send round to the public-house for a pot of milk half-and-half, positively and actually I'll drink it.'

And positively and actually Mr Pyke did drink it, and Mr Pluck helped him, while Mrs Nickleby looked on in divided admiration of the condescension of the two, and the aptitude with which they accommodated themselves to the pewter-pot; in explanation of which seeming marvel it may be here observed, that gentlemen who, like Messrs Pyke and Pluck, live upon their wits (or not so much, perhaps, upon the presence of their own wits as upon the absence of wits in other people) are occasionally reduced to very narrow shifts and straits, and are at such periods accustomed to regale themselves in a very simple and primitive manner.