Ha! ha! ha!' Ralph never laughed, but on this occasion he produced the nearest approach to it that he could, and waiting until Mr Squeers had enjoyed the professional joke to his heart's content, inquired what had brought him to town.
'Some bothering law business,' replied Squeers, scratching his head, 'connected with an action, for what they call neglect of a boy.

I don't know what they would have.

He had as good grazing, that boy had, as there is about us.' Ralph looked as if he did not quite 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.