uite understand the observation.

'Grazing,' said Squeers, raising his voice, under the impression that as
Ralph failed to comprehend him, he must be deaf. 'When a boy gets weak
and ill and don't relish his meals, we give him a change of diet--turn
him out, for an hour or so every day, into a neighbour's turnip field,
or sometimes, if it's a delicate case, a turnip field and a piece of
carrots alternately, and let him eat as many as he likes. There an't
better land in the country than this perwerse lad grazed on, and yet he
goes and catches cold and indigestion and what not, and then his friends
brings a lawsuit against ME! Now, you'd hardly suppose,' added Squeers,
moving in his chair with the impatience of an ill-used man, 'that
people's ingratitude would carry them quite as far as that; would you?'

'A hard case, indeed,' observed Ralph.

'You don't say more than the truth when you say that,' replied Squeers.
'I don't suppose there's a man going, as possesses the fondness for
youth that I do. There's youth to the amount of eight hundred pound a
year at Dotheboys Hall at this present time. I'd take sixteen hundred
pound worth if I could get 'em, and be as fond of every individual
twenty pound among 'em as nothing should equal it!'

'Are you stopping at your old quarters?' asked Ralph.

'Yes, we are at the Saracen,' replied Squeers, 'and as it don't want
very long to the end of the half-year, we shall continney to stop there
till I've collected the money, and some new boys too, I hope. I've
brought little Wackford up, on purpose to show to parents and
guardians. I shall put him in the advertisement, this time. Look at that
boy--himself a pupil. Why he's a miracle of high feeding, that boy is!'

'I should like to have a word with you,' said Ralph, who had both
spoken and listened mechanically for some time, and seemed to have been
thinking.

'As many words as you like, sir,' rejoined Squeers. 'Wackford, you go
and play in the back office, and don't move about too much or you'll get
thin, and that won't do. You haven't got such a thing as twopence, Mr
Nickleby, have you?' said Squeers, rattling a bunch of keys in his coat
pocket, and muttering something about its being all silver.

'I--think I have,' said Ralph, very slowly, and producing, after much
rummaging in an old drawer, a penny, a halfpenny, and two farthings.

'Thankee,' said Squeers, bestowing it upon his son. 'Here! You go and
buy a tart--Mr Nickleby'