‘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 the classical, commercial, or mathematical line, says I, gravely, “Why, sir, in the first place, are you a philosopher?”—“No, Mr. Squeers,” he says, “I an’t.” “Then, sir,” says I, “I am sorry for you, for I shan’t be able to explain it.” Naturally, the parent goes away and wishes he was a philosopher, and, equally naturally, thinks I’m one.’
Saying this, and a great deal more, with tipsy profundity and a serio-comic air, and keeping his eye all the time on Mrs. Sliderskew, who was unable to hear one word, Mr. Squeers concluded by helping himself and passing the bottle: to which Peg did becoming reverence.
‘That’s the time of day!’ said Mr. Squeers. ‘You look twenty pound ten better than you did.’
Again Mrs. Sliderskew chuckled, but modesty forbade her assenting verbally to the compliment.
‘Twenty pound ten better,’ repeated Mr. Squeers, ‘than you did that day when I first introduced myself. Don’t you know?’
‘Ah!’ said Peg, shaking her head, ‘but you frightened me that day.’
‘Did I?’ said Squeers; ‘well, it was rather a startling thing for a stranger to come and recommend himself by saying that he knew all about you, and what your name was, and why you were living so quiet here, and what you had boned, and who you boned it from, wasn’t it?’
Peg nodded her head in strong assent.