archly.

"Get along, you idle rogue! If I let that tumbler stand there, in a few
minutes the brandy-and-water--eh?--I beg pardon--the alcohol-and-water--gets
cold. Now, why--why the deuce--if the brand--the alcohol-and-water cools;
why--how--how is it we don't cool in the same way, I want to know? eh?"
demanded Mr. Bagges, with the air of a man who feels satisfied that he has
propounded a "regular poser."

"Why," replied Harry, "for the same reason that the room keeps warm so
long as there is a fire in the grate."

"You don't mean to say that I have a fire in my body?"

"I do, though."

"Eh, now? That's good," said Mr. Bagges. "That reminds me of the man in
love crying, 'Fire! fire!' and the lady said, 'Where, where?' And he
called out, 'Here! here!' with his hand upon his heart. Eh?--but now I
think of it--you said, the other day, that breathing was a sort of burning.
Do you mean to tell me that I--eh?--have fire, fire, as the lover said,
here, here--in short, that my chest is a grate or an Arnott's stove?"

"Not exactly so, uncle. But I do mean to tell you that you have a sort of
fire burning partly in your chest; but also, more or less, throughout your
whole body."

"Oh, Henry!" exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson, "How can you say such horrid
things!"

"Because they're quite true, mamma--but you needn't be frightened. The fire
of one's body is not hotter than from ninety degrees to one hundred and
four degrees or so. Still it is fire, and will burn some things, as you
would find, uncle, if, in using phosphorus, you were to let a little bit
of it get under your nail."

"I'll take your word for the fact, my boy," said Mr. Bagges. "But, if I
have a fire burning throughout my person--which I was not aware of, the
only inflammation I am ever troubled with being in the great toe--I say, if
my body is burning continually--how is it I don't smoke--eh? Come, now?"

"Perhaps you consume your own smoke," suggested Mr. Wilkinson, senior,
"like every well-regulated furnace."

"You smoke nothing but your pipe, uncle, because you burn all your
carbon," said Harry. "But, if your body doesn't smoke, it steams. Breathe
against a looking-glass, or look at your breath on a cold morning. Observe
how a horse reeks when it perspires. Besides--as you just now said you
recollected my telling you the other day--you breathe out carbonic acid,
and that, and the steam of the breath together, are exactly the same
things, you know, that a cand