ne,' returns Cornelia.

'Ay, truly,' says the Doctor. 'Bitherstone is new to Mr Toots.'

New to Florence, too, almost; for, in the schoolroom, Bitherstone--no
longer Master Bitherstone of Mrs Pipchin's--shows in collars and a
neckcloth, and wears a watch. But Bitherstone, born beneath some
Bengal star of ill-omen, is extremely inky; and his Lexicon has got so
dropsical from constant reference, that it won't shut, and yawns as
if it really could not bear to be so bothered. So does Bitherstone its
master, forced at Doctor Blimber's highest pressure; but in the yawn of
Bitherstone there is malice and snarl, and he has been heard to say that
he wishes he could catch 'old Blimber' in India. He'd precious soon find
himself carried up the country by a few of his (Bitherstone's) Coolies,
and handed over to the Thugs; he can tell him that.

Briggs is still grinding in the mill of knowledge; and Tozer, too;
and Johnson, too; and all the rest; the older pupils being principally
engaged in forgetting, with prodigious labour, everything they knew
when they were younger. All are as polite and as pale as ever; and among
them, Mr Feeder, B.A., with his bony hand and bristly head, is still
hard at it; with his Herodotus stop on just at present, and his other
barrels on a shelf behind him.

A mighty sensation is created, even among these grave young gentlemen,
by a visit from the emancipated Toots; who is regarded with a kind of
awe, as one who has passed the Rubicon, and is pledged never to come
back, and concerning the cut of whose clothes, and fashion of whose
jewellery, whispers go about, behind hands; the bilious Bitherstone,
who is not of Mr Toots's time, affecting to despise the latter to the
smaller boys, and saying he knows better, and that he should like to
see him coming that sort of thing in Bengal, where his mother had got an
emerald belonging to him that was taken out of the footstool of a Rajah.
Come now!

Bewildering emotions are awakened also by the sight of Florence, with
whom every young gentleman immediately falls in love, again; except,
as aforesaid, the bilious Bitherstone, who declines to do so, out of
contradiction. Black jealousies of Mr Toots arise, and Briggs is of
opinion that he ain't so very old after all. But this disparaging
insinuation is speedily made nought by Mr Toots saying aloud to Mr
Feeder, B.A., 'How are you, Feeder?' and asking him to come and dine
with him to-day at the Bedford; in right of