'A godfeyther! Ha! ha! ha! Tilly--hear till 'un--a godfeyther! Divn't say a word more, ye'll never beat thot.

Occasion for 'un--a godfeyther! Ha! ha! ha!' Never was man so tickled with a respectable old joke, as John Browdie was with this.

He chuckled, roared, half suffocated himself by laughing large pieces of beef into his windpipe, roared again, persisted in eating at the same time, got red in the face and black in the forehead, coughed, cried, got better, went off again laughing inwardly, got worse, choked, had his back thumped, stamped about, frightened his wife, and at last recovered in a state of the last exhaustion and with the water streaming from his eyes, but still faintly ejaculating, 'A godfeyther--a godfeyther, Tilly!' in a tone bespeaking an exquisite relish of the sally, which no suffering could diminish.
'You remember the night of our first tea-drinking ?' said Nicholas.
'Shall I e'er forget it, mun ?' replied John Browdie.
'He was a desperate fellow that night though, was he not, Mrs Browdie ?' said Nicholas.

'Quite a monster!' 'If you had only heard him as we were going home, Mr Nickleby, you'd have said so indeed,' returned the bride.

'I never was so frightened in all my life.' 'Coom, coom,' said John, with a broad grin; 'thou know'st betther than thot, Tilly.' 'So I was,' replied Mrs Browdie.