These sort of people, I tell him, are glad to sleep anywhere! Heaven suits the back to the burden.

What a nice thing it is to think that it should be so, isn't it ?' 'Very,' replied Kate.
'I'll walk with you part of the way, my dear,' said Miss Knag, 'for you must go very near our house; and as it's quite dark, and our last servant went to the hospital a week ago, with St Anthony's fire in her face, I shall be glad of your company.' Kate would willingly have excused herself from this flattering companionship; but Miss Knag having adjusted her bonnet to her entire satisfaction, took her arm with an air which plainly showed how much she felt the compliment she was conferring, and they were in the street before she could say another word.
'I fear,' said Kate, hesitating, 'that mama--my mother, I mean--is waiting for me.' 'You needn't make the least apology, my dear,' said Miss Knag, smiling sweetly as she spoke; 'I dare say she is a very respectable old person, and I shall be quite--hem--quite pleased to know her.' As poor Mrs Nickleby was cooling--not her heels alone, but her limbs generally at the street corner, Kate had no alternative but to make her known to Miss Knag, who, doing the last new carriage customer at second-hand, acknowledged the introduction with condescending politeness.

The three then walked away, arm in arm: with Miss Knag in the middle, in a special state of amiability.
'I have taken such a fancy to your daughter, Mrs Nickleby, you can't think,' said Miss Knag, after she had proceeded a little distance in dignified silence.
'I am delighted to hear it,' said Mrs Nickleby; 'though it is nothing new to me, that even strangers should like Kate.' 'Hem!' cried Miss Knag.
'You will like her better when you know how good she is,' said Mrs Nickleby.

'It is a great blessing to me, in my misfortunes, to have a child, who knows neither pride nor vanity, and whose bringing-up might very well have excused a little of both at first.

You don't know what it is to lose a husband, Miss Knag.' As Miss Knag had never yet known what it was to gain one, it followed, very nearly as a matter of course, that she didn't know what it was to lose one; so she said, in some haste, 'No, indeed I don't,' and said it with an air intending to signify that she should like to catch herself marrying anybody--no, no, she knew better than that.
'Kate has improved even in this little time, I have no doubt,' said Mrs Nickleby, glancing proudly at her daughter.
'Oh! of course,' said Miss Knag.
'And will improve still more,' added Mrs Nickleby.
'That she will, I'll be bound,' replied Miss Knag, squeezing Kate's arm in her own, to point the joke.
'She always was clever,' said poor Mrs Nickleby, brightening up, 'always, from a baby.