“Come; you let me out!” replied Oliver, from the inside. “Do you know this here voice, Oliver?” said Mr. Bumble. “Yes,” replied Oliver. “Ain’t you afraid of it, sir? Ain’t you a-tremling while I speak, sir?” said Mr. Bumble. “No!” replied Oliver boldly. An answer so different from the one he had expected to elicit, and was in the habit of receiving, staggered Mr. Bumble not a little. He stepped back from the keyhole, drew himself up to his full height, and looked from one to another of the three by-standers in mute astonishment. “Oh, you know Mr. Bumble, he must be mad,” said Mrs. Sowerberry. “No boy in half his senses could venture to speak so to you.” “It’s not madness, ma’am,” replied Mr. Bumble, after a few moments of deep meditation; “it’s meat.” “What!” exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry. “Meat, ma’am, meat,” replied Bumble, with stern emphasis. “You’ve overfed him, ma’am. You’ve raised a artificial soul and spirit in him, ma’am, unbecoming a person of his condition, as the board, Mrs. Sowerberry, who are practical philosophers, will tell you. What have paupers to do with soul or spirit either? It’s quite enough that we let ’em have live bodies. If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma’am, this would never have happened.” “Dear, dear!” ejaculated Mrs. Sowerberry, piously raising her eyes to the kitchen ceiling, “this comes of being liberal!” The liberality of Mrs. Sowerberry to Oliver had consisted in a profuse bestowal upon him of all the dirty odds and ends which nobody else would eat; so that there was a great deal of meekness and self-devotion in her voluntarily remaining under Mr. Bumble’s heavy accusation, of which, to do her justice, she was wholly innocent in thought, word, or deed. “Ah!” said Mr. Bumble, when the lady brought her eyes down to earth again; “the only thing that can be done now, that I know of, is to leave him in the cellar for a day or so till he’s a little starved down, and then to take him out and keep him on gruel all through his apprenticeship. He comes of a bad family—excitable natures, Mrs. Sowerberry. Both the nurse and doctor said that that mother of his made her way here against difficulties and pain that would have killed any well-disposed woman weeks before.” At this point of Mr. Bumble’s discourse, Oliver just hearing enough to know that some further allusion was being made to his mother, recommenced kicking with a violence which rendered every other sound inaudible. Sowerberry returned at this juncture, and Oliver’s offence having been explained to him, with such exaggerations as the ladies thought best calculated to rouse his ire, he unlocked the cellar-door in a twinkling, and dragged his rebellious apprentice out by the collar.