Peg, Mr Squeers drew a stool to the fire, and
placing himself over against her, and the bottle and glass on the floor
between them, roared out again, very loud,

'Well, my Slider!'

'I hear you,' said Peg, receiving him very graciously.

'I've come according to promise,' roared Squeers.

'So they used to say in that part of the country I come from,' observed
Peg, complacently, 'but I think oil's better.'

'Better than what?' roared Squeers, adding some rather strong language
in an undertone.

'No,' said Peg, 'of course not.'

'I never saw such a monster as you are!' muttered Squeers, looking as
amiable as he possibly could the while; for Peg's eye was upon him,
and she was chuckling fearfully, as though in delight at having made a
choice repartee, 'Do you see this? This is a bottle.'

'I see it,' answered Peg.

'Well, and do you see THIS?' bawled Squeers. 'This is a glass.' Peg saw
that too.

'See here, then,' said Squeers, accompanying his remarks with
appropriate action, 'I fill the glass from the bottle, and I say "Your
health, Slider," and empty it; then I rinse it genteelly with a little
drop, which I'm forced to throw into the fire--hallo! we shall have the
chimbley alight next--fill it again, and hand it over to you.'

'YOUR health,' said Peg.

'She understands that, anyways,' muttered Squeers, watching Mrs
Sliderskew as she dispatched her portion, and choked and gasped in a
most awful manner after so doing. 'Now then, let's have a talk. How's
the rheumatics?'

Mrs Sliderskew, with much blinking and chuckling, and with looks
expressive of her strong admiration of Mr Squeers, his person, manners,
and conversation, replied that the rheumatics were better.

'What's the reason,' said Mr Squeers, deriving fresh facetiousness from
the bottle; 'what's the reason of rheumatics? What do they mean? What do
people have'em for--eh?'

Mrs Sliderskew didn't know, but suggested that it was possibly because
they couldn't help it.

'Measles, rheumatics, hooping-cough, fevers, agers, and lumbagers,' said
Mr Squeers, 'is all philosophy together; that's what it is. The heavenly
bodies is philosophy, and the earthly bodies is philosophy. If there's a
screw loose in a heavenly body, that's philosophy; and if there's
screw loose in a earthly body, that's philosophy too; or it may be that
sometimes there's a little metaphysics in it, but that's not often.
Philosophy's the chap for me. If a parent asks a question in