"I should rather think I did," answered Mr. Bouncer, heartily, as he thought to himself—This old bald-pate is the parson of the parish who coached Smalls. I hope he 's not going to put me through an examination, and thinks that, as I 'm fresh from college, I ought to be well up in the classics.
"Yet the study of classical authors is a most improving and healthy pursuit," observed the Doctor, who, from the sententiousness of his remark might have been Dr. Johnson himself.
"I don't know about that—at least, in my case," replied Mr. Bouncer. "Pickwick 's more in my line than Plautus; and I prefer Bulwer to Virgil any day. But, I suppose I have n't the brains for Greek and Latin."
"Do you find that the study of dead languages affects your brain in any particular way?" asked Dr. Dustacre.
"Makes it like pap!" replied Mr. Bouncer, frankly, "or else they gave me too much pap when I was a baby, and softened my brains."
"You were not here when you were a baby, I think?" inquired the Doctor.
"Oh dear, no; at that uninteresting period of my existence I was in another part of England," was Mr. Bouncer's reply.
"Though you have been here, residing in this house, many years?"
"Oh, no; I have not."
"Not for the last two years?"
"Not for the last two weeks."
"You were not here, for example, last week?" asked Dr. Dustacre, continuing his examination of the supposed Mr. Winstanley, while the real Simon Pure, crouched
