Once on a time, in England, there were two brothers named Nickleby who had grown up to be very different men. Ralph was a rich and miserly money-lender who gained his wealth by persecuting the poor of London—a thin, cold-hearted, crafty man with a cruel smile. The other, who lived in the country, was generous but poor, so that when he died he left his wife and two children, Nicholas and Kate, with hardly a penny to keep them from starving.

In their trouble the mother decided to go and try to obtain help from her husband's brother, Ralph Nickleby.

Ralph was angry when he learned they had come to London, for he loved his gold better than anything else in the world. He lived in Golden Square, a very rich part of the city, in a great fine house, all alone save for one servant, and he kept only one clerk.

This clerk, who was named Noggs, had one glass eye and long, bony fingers which he had an uncomfortable habit of cracking together when he spoke to any one. He had once been rich, but he had given his money to Ralph Nickleby to invest for him, and the money-lender had ended by getting it all, so that the poor man at last had to become the other's clerk. When he first saw Nicholas and Kate, Noggs was sorry enough for them, because he knew it would be little help they would get from their stingy uncle.

Nicholas was proud-mettled, and his very bearing angered the money-lender. He called him a young puppy, and a pauper besides, to which Nicholas replied with heat and spirit. His mother succeeded in smoothing things over for the time, and though Ralph Nickleby from that moment hated the boy, he grudgingly promised her to get him a situation as a teacher.

The school the miser selected was one called Dotheboys Hall, a long, cold-looking, tumble-down building, one story high, in a dreary part of the country. It belonged to a man named Squeers, a burly, ruffianly hypocrite, who pretended to the world to be a kind, fatherly master, but in fact treated his pupils with such cruelty that almost the only ones ever sent there were poor little orphans, whose guardians were glad to get rid of them. Squeers had an oily, wrinkled face and flat shiny hair, brushed straight up from his forehead. His sleeves were too long and his trousers too short, and he carried a leather whip about in his pocket to punish the boys with.

Mrs. Squeers was a fat woman, who wore a soiled dressing-gown, kept her hair in curl papers all day, and always had a yellow handkerchief tied around her neck. She was as cruel as her husband. They had one daughter and a son named Wackford. The latter they kept as plump as could be, so he would serve as an advertisement of the school; the rest of the boys, however, were pale and thin.

No wonder, for they got almost nothing to eat. For dinner all they had was a bowl of thin porridge with a wedge of bread for a spoon. When they had eaten the porridge they ate the spoon. Once a week they were forced to swallow a dreadful mixture of brimstone and sulphur, because this dose took away their appetites so that they ate less for several days afterward. They were made to sleep five in a bed, and were poorly clothed, for whenever a new boy came Mrs. Squeers took his clothes away from him for Wackford, and made the new boy wear any old ones she could find. They were allowed to write only letters telling how happy they were there, and when letters came for any of them, Mrs. Squeers opened them first and took for herself any money that they contained.

There was no attempt at teaching at Dotheboys Hall. The books were dirty and torn and the classes were scarecrows. All the boys were made to work hard at chores about the place, and were flogged almost every day, so that their lives were miserable. What Squeers wanted was the money their guardians paid him for keeping them.

This was the kind of school for which Nicholas found himself hired at very low wages as a teacher.

He knew nothing about it yet, however, and thought himself lucky and his uncle kind as he bade his mother and Kate good-by and took the coach for Dotheboys Hall. Noggs, Ralph Nickleby's one-eyed clerk, was there to see him off, and put a letter into his hand as he started. Nicholas was so sad at leaving the two he loved best in the world, that he put it into his pocket and for the time forgot all about it.

On his arrival next day Nicholas's heart sank into his boots. When he saw the boys gathered in the barn, which served for a school-room, he was ready to die with shame and disgust to think he was to be a teacher in such a place.

But he had no money to take him back to London, and because he did not want to make his mother and Kate unhappy, he wrote them as cheerfully as he could. The letter Noggs had given him he remembered at last to read. It told him the writer feared his uncle had deceived him in regard to the school, and said if Nicholas needed a friend at any time, he would find one in him, Noggs. These kind words from the old clerk brought tears to Nicholas's eyes.

Of all the wretched boys there Nicholas pitied most a poor fellow named Smike, whom Squeers had made a drudge. He was tall and lanky and wore a little boy's suit, too short in the arms and legs. He had been placed there when a child, and the man who had brought him had disappeared and left no money to pay for his keep. Squeers's cruelties had made the unfortunate lad simple-minded. Besides this he was lame. Nicholas helped Smike all he could, and the poor fellow was so grateful that he followed the other about like a slave.

Squeers's daughter was named Fanny. She had red hair, which she wore in five exact rows on the top of her head. She thought herself very beautiful and at once fell in love with Nicholas. As he could not help showing that he did not like her, Miss Fanny grew spiteful and in revenge began to persecute Smike, knowing Nicholas liked him.

Smike stood this as long as he could, but at last one day he ran away. Squeers was furious. He took one chaise and Mrs. Squeers another, and off they went in different directions to find him. Nicholas was miserable, for he knew Smike would be caught. Sure enough, on the second day Mrs. Squeers returned, dragging her victim. When Squeers arrived Smike was taken from the cellar, where he had been locked up, and brought before the assembled boys for a public thrashing.

At the rain of brutal blows which began Nicholas's blood boiled. He stepped forward, crying "Stop!"

For answer Squeers struck him savagely in the face with his heavy ruler. Then Nicholas threw away his self-control, and leaping on the bully, to the unmeasured delight of the boys, took the ruler from him and thrashed him until he cried for mercy. All the while Mrs. Squeers was trying to drag the victor away by his coat tails, while the spiteful Miss Fanny threw inkstands at his head.

When his arm was tired Nicholas gave Squeers a final blow, which knocked him senseless into a corner, coolly went to his room, packed his few belongings in a bundle and left Dotheboys Hall for ever.

He was two hundred and fifty miles from London and had very little money. Snow was falling and for that night he took refuge in an empty barn. In the morning he awoke, startled, to see a figure sitting by him. It was Smike, who had followed him.

The poor creature fell on his knees. "Let me go with you!" he cried. "I want no clothes and I can beg my food. I will be your faithful servant. Only let me go with you."

"And so you shall!" said Nicholas. "Come!" He rose, took up his bundle, gave his hand to Smike and so they set out toward London together.

II
NICHOLAS BECOMES AN ACTOR

Meanwhile Ralph Nickleby, the money-lender, had given Kate and her mother leave to live in a rickety, unoccupied house which he owned. It was a dingy building on an old wharf, but Noggs, the clerk, himself cleaned and furnished one of its rooms so that it was fairly comfortable. When they were settled Ralph took Kate to a dressmaker's, where he got her a situation, hoping thus they would not call on him for any money.

The dressmaker called herself Madame Mantalini. Her real name was Muntle, but she thought the other sounded better. Her husband was a plump, lazy man with huge side-whiskers, who spent most of the time curling them and betting on horse-races. He gambled away all the money Madame Mantalini made, but he pretended to be terribly fond of her, and was always calling her his "little fairy" and his "heart's delight," so that the silly woman always forgave him. He tried to kiss Kate the first day, which made her detest him.

At Madame Mantalini's Kate had to stand up all day trying on dresses for rich ladies, who were often rude to her. And because they preferred to be waited on by the pretty, rosy-cheeked girl, Miss Knag, the ugly forewoman, hated the child, and did all she could to make her unhappy.

Kate's mother used to wait each evening on the street corner outside, and they would walk home together. They had no idea what trouble Nicholas was having all this time, because he had written them such cheerful letters, and whenever they felt sadder than usual they would comfort themselves by thinking how well he was getting along and what a fine position he had.

If they could have seen him when he finally got to London after running away from Dotheboys Hall, they would hardly have known him. Both he and poor Smike were hungry and muddy and tired. Remembering Noggs's kind letter, Nicholas went first to the little garret where the clerk lived, and through him he found a cheap room on the roof of the building, which he rented for himself and Smike. Then he started out to find his mother and Kate.

He would have hastened if he had guessed what was happening or how badly Kate had been treated by Ralph Nickleby.

The evening before, as it happened, Kate had been invited to dinner at her uncle's fine house, and there she had met two dissipated young men—Lord Frederick Verisopht and Sir Mulberry Hawk, the latter of whom had looked at her and talked to her so rudely that she had indignantly left the table and gone home. She had not slept a wink that night, and the next morning, to make her and her mother more wretched still, Ralph Nickleby called with a letter he had just received from Fanny Squeers, declaring that Nicholas was a thief and a scoundrel; that he had tried to murder her father and all his family, and had run off with one of the pupils of Dotheboys Hall.

To be sure, neither of them believed it, but if made them very unhappy. And then, just as Ralph was reading them the last line of the letter, in came Nicholas! You may be sure he comforted them and told them it was a lie. He told Ralph what he thought of him also in stern language, which made his uncle angrier than ever.

Then, seeing that his presence was making things worse, and realizing in what poverty his dear ones were, and that they were so wholly dependent on Ralph for help, Nicholas came to a very brave determination. He told them that, as he could not help them himself, he would go away from them until his fortune bettered. So, bidding them good-by, and telling his uncle he should keep watch over them and that if any harm came to them he would hold him accountable, Nicholas went sadly back to his garret room and to Smike.

He tried hard for some days to find a situation, but failed, and he would not take money from Noggs, who was so poor himself. So at last, with Smike, he set out on foot for Portsmouth, which was a seaport, thinking there they might find a chance to go as sailors in some ship.

At an inn on the way, however, Nicholas met a man who caused him to change all his plans. This man was a Mr. Vincent Crummles. When Nicholas first saw him in the inn he was teaching his two sons to make-believe fight with swords. They were practising for a play, for Mr. Crummles was manager of a theater in Portsmouth, and he proposed that Nicholas join the company and become an actor.

There seemed nothing else to do, so Nicholas agreed, and next day they went to the Portsmouth theater, where he was introduced to all the company.

It was a very curious mixture. There was Mrs. Crummles, who took the tickets, and little Miss Crummles, whom the bills called "The Infant Phenomenon," and who was always said to be only ten years old. There was a slim young man with weak eyes who played the lover, and a fat man with a turned-up nose who played the funny countryman, and a shabby old man whose breath smelled of gin, who took the part of the good old banker with the gray side-whiskers. Then there was the lady who acted the rÔle of the wicked adventuress, and all the others.

Nicholas had to begin by writing a play which had parts for all of them, and it proved a great success. Smike, whom he drilled himself, took the part of a hungry boy, and he looked so starved, naturally, from his life with Squeers, that he was tremendously applauded.

One of the other actors was so jealous at the play's success that he sent Nicholas a challenge to a duel, but Nicholas walked on to the stage before the whole company and knocked the actor down, and after that he had no trouble and was a great favorite.

He might have stayed a long time at Mr. Crummles's theater, for he had earned quite a good deal of money, but one day he got a letter from Noggs, the clerk, telling him that all was not well with his mother and Kate. And without waiting an hour, Nicholas resigned from the company and, with Smike, set out again for London.

III
NICHOLAS COMES TO KATE'S RESCUE

Noggs was right. Ralph Nickleby had never ceased to persecute Kate and her mother. In fact, when he had invited Kate to the dinner at which she had been insulted, it was for his own evil purpose. He had done so, hoping she might impress the foolish young Lord Verisopht, whose money he was hoping to get, and whom he wished to attract to his house.

The young nobleman, as Ralph had intended, fell in love with Kate's sweet face at once, and found out from her uncle where she lived.

She had lost her first position at the dressmaker's (for Mr. Mantalini had thrown away his wife's money on race-horses until the sheriff had seized the business), and she was acting now as companion to a Mrs. Wititterly, a pale, languid lady who considered herself a very fashionable person indeed, and was always suffering from imaginary ailments. Lord Frederick and Sir Mulberry Hawk came often to the house, pretending to flatter Mrs. Wititterly, but really to see Kate, who heartily disliked them both.

Mrs. Wititterly at last came to realize that the two men at whose attentions she had felt so flattered really cared only for her young companion, and, being vain and jealous, she tormented and scolded Kate till the poor girl's life was a burden.

At length, feeling that she could endure it no longer, Kate went to Ralph and begged him with tears to help her find another situation, but the money-lender refused to aid her. Noggs, the clerk, was sorry for her, but could do nothing except write to Nicholas, and this was the reason for the letter that had brought Nicholas post-haste back to London.

Just what kind of persecution Kate had had to bear he learned by accident almost as soon as he got there.

As he sat in a coffee-house he suddenly heard the words, "little Kate Nickleby," spoken by a man behind him. He turned and listened.

Four men whom he had never seen were drinking toasts to her, and Nicholas grew hot with rage at the coarse words they used. Sitting there, scarcely able to contain himself, he heard the whole story of his Uncle Ralph's plot, he heard his sister's sufferings derided, her goodness jeered at, her beauty made the subject of insolent jests. One of the four men, of course, was Lord Frederick Verisopht, and the coarsest and the most vulgar of them all, as may be guessed, was Sir Mulberry Hawk.

White with anger, Nicholas confronted the party and, throwing down his card on the table, declared that the lady in question was his sister, and demanded of Hawk his name. Hawk refused to answer. Nicholas called him a liar and a coward, and seating himself, swore the other should not leave his sight before he knew who he was.

When Hawk attempted to enter his carriage Nicholas sprang on to the step. The other, in a fury, struck him with the whip, and Nicholas, wrenching it from him, with one blow laid open Hawk's cheek. The horse, frightened at the struggle, started off at a terrific speed, and Nicholas felt himself hurled to the ground.

As he rose, he saw the runaway horse, whirling across the pavement, upset the carriage with a crash of breaking glass. Nicholas had no doubt that the man it held had been frightfully hurt if not killed. He felt faint from his own fall, and it was with difficulty that he reached Noggs's garret, whither, before the adventure in the coffee-room, he had sent Smike to announce his coming.

His first step now was to write a letter to Ralph, telling him he at last knew what a villain he was, and that he and his mother and sister cast him off for ever, with shame that they had ever asked his aid. The next day Nicholas took Kate from the Wititterly house and his mother from her poor lodging, and rented them rooms in another part of the city. Then he started out to find some employment for himself.

For a long time he was unsuccessful, but one day (and a very lucky day Nicholas thought it ever afterward) he met on the street a round-faced, jolly-looking old gentleman, with whom he fell into conversation, and before long, almost without knowing it, he had told him all his troubles.

This old gentleman was named Cheeryble, and the firm to which he belonged was Cheeryble Brothers. He and his twin brother had come to London, barefoot, when they were boys, and though they had grown very rich, they had never forgotten what it was to be poor and wretched. The old gentleman asked Nicholas to come with him to his office and there they met the other Mr. Cheeryble.

Nicholas could scarcely tell the two brothers apart, for they were like as two peas. They were precisely the same size, wore clothes just alike and laughed in the same key. Each had even lost exactly the same number of teeth. They were loved by everybody, for they went through life doing good wherever they could. They both liked Nicholas at once, and the upshot was that they gave him a position in their counting-room and rented a pleasant cottage near by for his mother and Kate.

So there Nicholas took up work and they were all happy and comfortable—very different from Ralph Nickleby, the money-lender, in his fine house, with only the memory of his own wickedness for company.

IV
WHAT HAPPENED TO EVERYBODY

Ralph Nickleby's hatred had been growing day by day. As he could not harm Nicholas now, he tried to hurt him through Smike. He sent for Squeers, and the latter, finding Smike alone one day on the street, seized him, put him in a coach and started to take him back to Dotheboys Hall. But luckily his victim escaped and got back to London.

Then Ralph formed a wicked plot to get Smike surely into their hands. He hired a man to claim that he was the boy's father, who had first taken him to Squeers's school. Squeers, too, swore to this lying tale. But the Cheeryble brothers suspected the story, and when Ralph saw they were determined to help Nicholas protect Smike, he was afraid to go any further with the plan. So he smothered his rage for the time being, and meanwhile a most important thing happened to Nicholas—he fell in love!

It came about in this way: There was a man named Bray, who had been arrested for debt and was allowed to live only in a certain street under the guardianship of the jailer, for this was the law in England then. He was slowly dying of heart-disease, and all the money he had to live on was what his only daughter, a lovely girl named Madeline, earned by painting and selling pictures.

The Cheeryble brothers had learned of their poverty, (for it was hard for Madeline to find purchasers), and they sent Nicholas to buy some of the pictures. He was to pretend to be a dealer, so that Madeline would not suspect it was done for charity. Nicholas went more than once and soon had fallen very much in love with Madeline Bray.

He was not the only one who admired her, however. There was an old man named Gride, almost as stingy as Ralph Nickleby, who had discovered by accident that a large sum of money really belonged to Madeline, which she and her father knew nothing about, and he thought it would be a fine thing to marry her and thus get this fortune into his hands. Now, Ralph Nickleby was one of the men who was keeping Bray a prisoner, and so Gride went to him and asked him to help him marry Madeline. If Bray made his daughter marry the old miser he himself was to be set free. Ralph, for his share, was to get some of the money the old man Gride knew should be Madeline's.

It was a pretty plan and it pleased Ralph, for he cared little what lives he ruined so long as he got money by it. So he agreed, and soon convinced Bray (who, ill as he was, was utterly selfish) that it would be a fine thing for Madeline to marry the hideous old Gride and so free her father. At length, in despair, because she thought it her duty to her heartless father, Madeline consented to do so.

Nicholas might never have known of this till after the wedding, but luckily Noggs, the clerk, had overheard the old skinflint make the bargain with Ralph, and when one day Nicholas confessed that he was in love with Madeline, the good-hearted clerk told him all that he had found out.

Nicholas was in great trouble, for he loved Madeline very dearly. He went to her and begged her not to marry Gride, but she thought it her duty. He went to Gride, too, but the hideous old miser only sneered at him.

At last, in desperation, he told Kate, and the brother and sister went together to Bray's house. They reached it just as the wedding was about to begin.

Ralph Nickleby, who was there, foamed with fury to find the nephew he so hated again stepping between him and his evil designs. He tried to bar them out, but Nicholas forced him back.

They would doubtless have come to blows, but at that moment there came from another room the sound of a fall, and a scream from Madeline. The excitement had proved too much for her father. His heart had failed and he had fallen dead on the floor. Thus Providence interfered to bring the wicked scheme of the marriage to naught.

Vainly did Gride bemoan the loss of the money he had hoped to gain, and vainly did Ralph Nickleby, with curses, try to prevent. Nicholas thrust them both aside, lifted the unconscious Madeline as easily as if she had been a baby, placed her with Kate in a coach and, daring Ralph to follow; jumped up beside the coachman and bade him drive away.

He took her to his own home, where his mother and Kate cared for her tenderly till she had recovered from the shock and was her own lovely self again.

The penalty that he had so long deserved was soon to overtake Ralph Nickleby. He lost much of his wealth through a failure, and close on the heels of this misfortune came the news that the infamous plot he had formed against Smike had been discovered and that Squeers, his accomplice, had been arrested.

The most terrible blow came last. A man whom Ralph had long ago ruined and had caused to be transported for a crime, confessed that he had been the one who, many years before, had left Smike at Dotheboys Hall, and he confessed also that Smike was really Ralph Nickleby's own son by a secret marriage. Ralph had not known this, because the man, in revenge, had falsely told him the child was dead.

The knowledge that, in Smike, he had been persecuting his own son was the crowning blow for cruel Ralph Nickleby. When he heard this he locked himself up alone in his great house and never was seen alive again. His body was found in the garret where he had hanged himself to a rafter.

Poor Smike, however, did not live to sorrow over the villainy of his father. The exposure and hardships of his years at Squeers's school had broken his health. He had for long been gradually growing weaker, and at last one day he died peacefully, with Nicholas's arms around him.

Every one of whose villainy this story tells came to a bad end. Sir Mulberry Hawk quarreled with young Lord Verisopht and shot him dead in the duel that followed. For this he himself had to fly to a foreign country, where he finally died miserably in jail. Gride, the miser who had plotted to marry Madeline, met almost as terrible a fate as Ralph's. His house was broken into by burglars one night and he was found murdered in his bed.

Squeers was declared guilty and transported for seven years. When the news reached Dotheboys Hall such a cheer arose as had never been heard there. It came on the weekly "treacle day," and the boys ducked young Wackford in the soup kettle and made Mrs. Squeers swallow a big dose of her own brimstone. Then, big and little, they all ran away, just as Nicholas and Smike had done.

Kate married a nephew of the Cheeryble brothers, and Nicholas, of course, married Madeline, and in time became a partner in the firm. All of them lived near by, and their little children played together under the watchful care of old Noggs, the one-eyed clerk, who loved them all alike.

The children laid flowers every day on poor Smike's grave, and often their eyes filled with tears as they spoke low and softly of the dead cousin they had never known.