'Best thanks to you for your goodness, and begging and praying you not
to be hard upon me another time!'

'I don't know,' resumed Mrs Browdie, 'that I have said anything very bad
of you, even now. At all events, what I did say was quite true; but if I
have, I am very sorry for it, and I beg your pardon. You have said much
worse of me, scores of times, Fanny; but I have never borne any malice
to you, and I hope you'll not bear any to me.'

Miss Squeers made no more direct reply than surveying her former friend
from top to toe, and elevating her nose in the air with ineffable
disdain. But some indistinct allusions to a 'puss,' and a 'minx,' and a
'contemptible creature,' escaped her; and this, together with a severe
biting of the lips, great difficulty in swallowing, and very frequent
comings and goings of breath, seemed to imply that feelings were
swelling in Miss Squeers's bosom too great for utterance.

While the foregoing conversation was proceeding, Master Wackford,
finding himself unnoticed, and feeling his preponderating inclinations
strong upon him, had by little and little sidled up to the table and
attacked the food with such slight skirmishing as drawing his fingers
round and round the inside of the plates, and afterwards sucking them
with infinite relish; picking the bread, and dragging the pieces over
the surface of the butter; pocketing lumps of sugar, pretending all
the time to be absorbed in thought; and so forth. Finding that no
interference was attempted with these small liberties, he gradually
mounted to greater, and, after helping himself to a moderately good cold
collation, was, by this time, deep in the pie.

Nothing of this had been unobserved by Mr Squeers, who, so long as the
attention of the company was fixed upon other objects, hugged himself to
think that his son and heir should be fattening at the enemy's expense.
But there being now an appearance of a temporary calm, in which the
proceedings of little Wackford could scarcely fail to be observed,
he feigned to be aware of the circumstance for the first time, and
inflicted upon the face of that young gentleman a slap that made the
very tea-cups ring.

'Eating!' cried Mr Squeers, 'of what his father's enemies has left! It's
fit to go and poison you, you unnat'ral boy.'

'It wean't hurt him,' said John, apparently very much relieved by the
prospect of having a man in the quarrel; 'let' un eat. I wish the whole
school was here. I'd give'em