in the
midst of a death-like silence--

"Let any boy speak a word without leave, and I'll take the skin off that
boy's back!" many of the particulars given immediately afterwards by
the Reader were, in spite of the surrounding misery, irresistibly
provocative of laughter. Ample justification for this, in truth, is
very readily adduceable. Mr. Squeers having, through his one eye, made
a mental abstract of Cobbey's letter, for example, Cobbey and the whole
school were thus feelingly informed of its contents--"Oh! Cobbey's
grandmother is dead, and his uncle John has took to drinking. Which is
all the news his sister sends, except eighteen-pence--which will just
pay for that broken square of glass! Mrs. Squeers, my dear, will you
take the money?" Another while, Graymarsh's maternal aunt, who "thinks
Mrs. Squeers must be a angel," and that Mr. Squeers is too good for this
world, "would have sent the two pairs of stockings, as desired, but
is short of money, so forwards a tract instead," and so on; "Ah-! a
delightful letter--very affecting, indeed!" quoth Squeers. "It was
affecting in one sense!" observed the Reader; "for Graymarsh's maternal
aunt was strongly supposed by her more intimate friends to be his
maternal parent!" Perhaps the epistle from Mobbs's mother-in-law was the
best of all, however--the old lady who "took to her bed on hearing that
he wouldn't eat fat;" and who "wishes to know by an early post where he
expects to go to, if he quarrels with his vittles?" adding, "This was
told her in the London newspapers--not by Mr. Squeers, for he is too
kind and too good to set anybody against anybody!"

As an interlude, overflowing with fun, came Miss Squeers's
tea-drinking--the result of her suddenly falling in love with the new
usher, and that chiefly by reason of the straightness of his legs, "the
general run of legs at Dotheboys Hall being crooked." How John Browdie
(with his hair damp from washing) appeared upon the occasion in a clean
shirt--"whereof thecollars might have belonged to some giant
ancestor,"--and greeted the assembled company, including his intended,
Tilda Price, "with a grin that even the collars could not conceal," the
creator of the worthy Yorkshireman went on to describe, with a gusto
akin to the relish with which every utterance of John Browdie's was
caught up by the listeners. Whether he spoke in good humour or in ill
humour, the burly cornfactor was equally delightful. One while saying,
laugh