There never was such a week of discoveries and surprises as the first week at that cottage.  Every night when Nicholas came home, something new had been found.  One day it was a grape-vine, and another day it was a boiler, and another day it was the key of the front parlour cupboard at the bottom of the water-butt, and so on through a hundred items.

As for Nicholas’s work in the counting-house, Tim Linkinwater was satisfied with the young man the very first day.

Tim turned pale and stood watching with breathless anxiety when Nicholas made his first entry in the books of Cheeryble Brothers, while the two brothers looked on with smiling faces.

Presently the old clerk nodded his head, signifying “He’ll do.”  But when Nicholas stopped to refer to some other page, Tim Linkinwater, unable to restrain his satisfaction any longer, descended from his stool, and caught him rapturously by the hand.

“He has done it!” said Tim, looking round triumphantly at his employers.  “His capital ‘B’s’ and ‘D’s’ are exactly like mine; he dots his small ‘i’s’ and crosses every ‘t.’  There ain’t such a young man in all London.  The City can’t produce his equal.  I challenge the City to do it!”

IV.—­The Brothers Cheeryble

In course of time the brothers Cheeryble, in their frequent visits to the cottage at Bow, often took with them their nephew Frank; and it also happened that Miss Madeline Bray, a ward of the brothers, was taken to the cottage to recover from a serious illness.

Nicholas, from the first time he had seen Madeline in the office of Cheeryble Brothers, had fallen in love with her; but he decided that as an honourable man no word of love must pass his lips.  While Kate Nickleby had been equally firm in declining to listen to any proposal from Frank.

It was some time after Madeline had left the cottage, and Nicholas and Kate had begun to try in good earnest to stifle their own regrets, and to live for each other and for their mother, when there came one evening, per Mr. Linkinwater, an invitation from the brothers to dinner on the next day but one.

“You may depend on it that this means something besides dinner,” said Mrs. Nickleby solemnly.

When the great day arrived who should be there at the house of the brothers but Frank and Madeline.

“Young men,” said brother Charles, “shake hands.”

“I need no bidding to do that,” said Nicholas.

“Nor I,” rejoined Frank, and the two young men clasped hands heartily.

The old gentleman took them aside.

“I wish to see you friends—­close and firm friends.  Frank, look here!  Mrs. Nickleby, will you come on the other side?  This is a copy of the will of Madeline’s grandfather, bequeathing her the sum of L12,000.  Now, Frank, you were largely instrumental in recovering this document.  The fortune is but a small one, but we love Madeline.  Will you become a suitor for her hand?”