Mr. Squeers’s appearance was not prepossessing. He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two. The eye he had, was unquestionably useful, but decidedly not ornamental: being of a greenish grey, and in shape resembling the fan-light of a street door. The blank side of his face was much wrinkled and puckered up, which gave him a very sinister appearance, especially when he smiled, at which times his expression bordered closely on the villainous. His hair was very flat and shiny, save at the ends, where it was brushed stiffly up from a low protruding forehead, which assorted well with his harsh voice and coarse manner. He was about two or three and fifty, and a trifle below the middle size; he wore a white neckerchief with long ends, and a suit of scholastic black; but his coat sleeves being a great deal too long, and his trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill at ease in his clothes, and as if he were in a perpetual state of astonishment at finding himself so respectable.
Mr. Squeers was standing in a box by one of the coffee-room fire-places, fitted with one such table as is usually seen in coffee-rooms, and two of extraordinary shapes and dimensions made to suit the angles of the partition. In a corner of the seat, was a very small deal trunk, tied round with a scanty piece of cord; and on the trunk was perched – his lace-up half-boots and corduroy trousers dangling in the air – a diminutive boy, with his shoulders drawn up to his ears, and his hands planted on his knees, who glanced timidly at the schoolmaster, from time to time, with evident dread and apprehension.
‘Half-past three,’ muttered Mr. Squeers, turning from the window, and looking sulkily at the coffee-room clock. ‘There will be nobody here today.’
Much vexed by this reflection, Mr. Squeers looked at the little boy to see whether he was doing anything he could beat him for. As he happened not to be doing anything at all, he merely boxed his ears, and told him not to do it again.
‘At Midsummer,’ muttered Mr. Squeers, resuming his complaint, ‘I took down ten boys; ten twenties is two hundred pound. I go back at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, and have got only three – three oughts is an ought – three twos is six – sixty pound. What’s come of all the boys? what’s parents got in their heads? what does it all mean?’
Here the little boy on the top of the trunk gave a violent sneeze.
‘Halloa, sir!’ growled the schoolmaster, turning round. ‘What’s that, sir?’
‘Nothing, please sir,’ replied the little boy.
‘Nothing, sir!’ exclaimed Mr. Squeers.
‘Please sir, I sneezed,’ rejoined the boy, trembling till the little trunk shook under him.
‘Oh! sneezed, did you?’ retorted Mr. Squeers. ‘Then what did you say “nothing” for, sir?’
In default of a better answer to this question, the little boy screwed a couple of knuckles into each of his eyes and began to cry, wherefore Mr Squeers knocked him off the trunk with a blow on one side of the face, and knocked him on again with a blow on the other.
‘Wait till I get you down into Yorkshire, my young gentleman,’ said Mr Squeers, ‘and then I’ll give you the rest. Will you hold that noise, sir?’
‘Ye – ye – yes,’ sobbed the little boy, rubbing his face very hard with the Beggar’s Petition in printed calico.
‘Then do so at once, sir,’ said Squeers. ‘Do you hear?’
As this admonition was accompanied with a threatening gesture, and uttered with a savage aspect, the little boy rubbed his face harder, as if to keep the tears back; and, beyond alternately sniffing and choking, gave no further vent to his emotions.
‘Mr. Squeers,’ said the waiter, looking in at this juncture; ‘here’s a gentleman asking for you at the bar.’
‘Show the gentleman in, Richard,’ replied Mr. Squeers, in a soft voice. ‘Put your handkerchief in your pocket, you little scoundrel, or I’ll murder you when the gentleman goes.’
The schoolmaster had scarcely uttered these words in a fierce whisper, when the stranger entered. Affecting not to see him, Mr. Squeers feigned to be intent upon mending a pen, and offering benevolent advice to his youthful pupil.
‘My dear child,’ said Mr. Squeers, ‘all people have their trials. This early trial of yours that is fit to make your little heart burst, and your very eyes come out of your head with crying, what is it? Nothing; less than nothing. You are leaving your friends, but you will have a father in me, my dear, and a mother in Mrs. Squeers. At the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, where youth are boarded, clothed, booked, washed, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries – ’
‘It is the gentleman,’ observed the stranger, stopping the schoolmaster in the rehearsal of his advertisement. ‘Mr. Squeers, I believe, sir?’
‘The same, sir,’ said Mr. Squeers, with an assumption of extreme surprise.
‘The gentleman,’ said the stranger, ‘that advertised in the Times newspaper?’
‘ – Morning Post, Chronicle, Herald, and Advertiser, regarding the Academy called Dotheboys Hall at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire,’ added Mr. Squeers. ‘You come on business, sir. I see by my young friends. How do you do, my little gentleman? and how do you do, sir?’ With this salutation Mr. Squeers patted the heads of two hollow-eyed, small-boned little boys, whom the applicant had brought with him, and waited for further communications.
‘I am in the oil and colour way. My name is Snawley, sir,’ said the stranger.
Squeers inclined his head as much as to say, ‘And a remarkably pretty name, too.’
The stranger continued. ‘I have been thinking, Mr. Squeers, of placing my two boys at your school.’
‘It is not for me to say so, sir,’ replied Mr. Squeers, ‘but I don’t think you could possibly do a better thing.’
‘Hem!’ said the other. ‘Twenty pounds per annewum, I believe, Mr. Squeers?’
‘Guineas,’ rejoined the schoolmaster, with a persuasive smile.
‘Pounds for two, I think, Mr. Squeers,’ said Mr. Snawley, solemnly.
‘I don’t think it could be done, sir,’ replied Squeers, as if he had never considered the proposition before. ‘Let me see; four fives is twenty, double that, and deduct the – well, a pound either way shall not stand betwixt us. You must recommend me to your connection, sir, and make it up that way.’
‘They are not great eaters,’ said Mr. Snawley.
‘Oh! that doesn’t matter at all,’ replied Squeers. ‘We don’t consider the boys’ appetites at our establishment.’ This was strictly true; they did not.
‘Every wholesome luxury, sir, that Yorkshire can afford,’ continued Squeers; ‘every beautiful moral that Mrs. Squeers can instil; every – in short, every comfort of a home that a boy could wish for, will be theirs, Mr. Snawley.’
‘I should wish their morals to be particularly attended to,’ said Mr Snawley.
‘I am glad of that, sir,’ replied the schoolmaster, drawing himself up. ‘They have come to the right shop for morals, sir.’
‘You are a moral man yourself,’ said Mr. Snawley.
‘I rather believe I am, sir,’ replied Squeers.
‘I have the satisfaction to know you are, sir,’ said Mr. Snawley. ‘I asked one of your references, and he said you were pious.’
‘Well, sir, I hope I am a little in that line,’ replied Squeers.
‘I hope I am also,’ rejoined the other. ‘Could I say a few words with you in the next box?’
‘By