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.