In this manner they walked on, very amicably, until they arrived at Miss
Knag's brother's, who was an ornamental stationer and small circulating
library keeper, in a by-street off Tottenham Court Road; and who let
out by the day, week, month, or year, the newest old novels, whereof
the titles were displayed in pen-and-ink characters on a sheet of
pasteboard, swinging at his door-post. As Miss Knag happened, at the
moment, to be in the middle of an account of her twenty-second offer
from a gentleman of large property, she insisted upon their all going in
to supper together; and in they went.
'Don't go away, Mortimer,' said Miss Knag as they entered the shop.
'It's only one of our young ladies and her mother. Mrs and Miss
Nickleby.'
'Oh, indeed!' said Mr Mortimer Knag. 'Ah!'
Having given utterance to these ejaculations with a very profound
and thoughtful air, Mr Knag slowly snuffed two kitchen candles on the
counter, and two more in the window, and then snuffed himself from a box
in his waistcoat pocket.
There was something very impressive in the ghostly air with which
all this was done; and as Mr Knag was a tall lank gentleman of solemn
features, wearing spectacles, and garnished with much less hair than
a gentleman bordering on forty, or thereabouts, usually boasts, Mrs
Nickleby whispered her daughter that she thought he must be literary.
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