When the fights were over, Biddy gave out the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we could,--or what we couldn't--in a frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high, shrill, monotonous voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or reverence for, what we were reading about.

When this horrible din had lasted a certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr.Wopsle's great-aunt, who staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears.

This was understood to terminate the Course for the evening, and we emerged into the air with shrieks of intellectual victory.

It is fair to remark that there was no prohibition against any pupil's entertaining himself with a slate or even with the ink (when there was any), but that it was not easy to pursue that branch of study in the winter season, on account of the little general shop in which the classes were holden--and which was also Mr.Wopsle's great-aunt's sitting-room and bedchamber--being but faintly illuminated through the agency of one low-spirited dip-candle and no snuffers.
It appeared to me that it would take time to become uncommon, under these circumstances: nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and that very evening Biddy entered on our special agreement, by imparting some information from her little catalogue of Prices, under the head of moist sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large old English D which she had imitated from the heading of some newspaper, and which I supposed, until she told me what it was, to be a design for a buckle.
Of course there was a public-house in the village, and of course Joe liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there.

I had received strict orders from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen, that evening, on my way from school, and bring him home at my peril.