Hard Times by Charles Dickens (ebooks that read to you txt) 📕

“And you were in crack society. Devilish high society,” he said, warming his legs.

“It is true, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, with an affectation of humility the very opposite of his, and therefore in no danger of jostling it.

“You were in the tiptop fashion, and all the rest of it,” said Mr. Bounderby.

“Yes, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a kind of social widowhood upon her. “It is unquestionably true.”

Mr. Bounderby, bending himself at the knees, literally embraced his legs in his great satisfaction and laughed aloud. Mr. and Miss Gradgrind being then announced, he received the former with a shake of the hand, and the latter with a kiss.

“Can Jupe be sent here, Bounderby?” asked Mr. Gradgrind.

Certainly. So Jupe was sent there. On coming in, she curtseyed to Mr. Bounderby, and to his friend Tom Gradgrind, and also to Louisa; but in her confusion unluckily omitted Mrs. Sparsit. Observing this, the blustrous Bounderby had the following remarks to make:

“Now, I tell you what, my girl. The name of that lady by the teapot, is Mrs. Sparsit. That lady acts as mistress of this house, and she is a highly connected lady. Consequently, if ever you come again into any room in this house, you will make a short stay in it if you don’t behave towards that lady in your most respectful manner. Now, I don’t care a button what you do to me, because I don’t affect to be anybody. So far from having high connections I have no connections at all, and I come of the scum of the earth. But towards that lady, I do care what you do; and you shall do what is deferential and respectful, or you shall not come here.”

“I hope, Bounderby,” said Mr. Gradgrind, in a conciliatory voice, “that this was merely an oversight.”

“My friend Tom Gradgrind suggests, Mrs. Sparsit,” said Bounderby, “that this was merely an oversight. Very likely. However, as you are aware, ma’am, I don’t allow of even oversights towards you.”

“You are very good indeed, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head with her State humility. “It is not worth speaking of.”

Sissy, who all this time had been faintly excusing herself with tears in her eyes, was now waved over by the master of the house to Mr. Gradgrind. She stood looking intently at him, and Louisa stood coldly by, with her eyes upon the ground, while he proceeded thus:

“Jupe, I have made up my mind to take you into my house; and, when you are not in attendance at the school, to employ you about Mrs. Gradgrind, who is rather an invalid. I have explained to Miss Louisa⁠—this is Miss Louisa⁠—the miserable but natural end of your late career; and you are to expressly understand that the whole of that subject is past, and is not to be referred to any more. From this time you begin your history. You are, at present, ignorant, I know.”

“Yes, sir, very,” she answered, curtseying.

“I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly educated; and you will be a living proof to all who come into communication with you, of the advantages of the training you will receive. You will be reclaimed and formed. You have been in the habit now of reading to your father, and those people I found you among, I dare say?” said Mr. Gradgrind, beckoning her nearer to him before he said so, and dropping his voice.

“Only to father and Merrylegs, sir. At least I mean to father, when Merrylegs was always there.”

“Never mind Merrylegs, Jupe,” said Mr. Gradgrind, with a passing frown. “I don’t ask about him. I understand you to have been in the habit of reading to your father?”

“O, yes, sir, thousands of times. They were the happiest⁠—O, of all the happy times we had together, sir!”

It was only now when her sorrow broke out, that Louisa looked at her.

“And what,” asked Mr. Gradgrind, in a still lower voice, “did you read to your father, Jupe?”

“About the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, and the Genies,” she sobbed out; “and about⁠—”

“Hush!” said Mr. Gradgrind, “that is enough. Never breathe a word of such destructive nonsense any more. Bounderby, this is a case for rigid training, and I shall observe it with interest.”

“Well,” returned Mr. Bounderby, “I have given you my opinion already, and I shouldn’t do as you do. But, very well, very well. Since you are bent upon it, very well!”

So, Mr. Gradgrind and his daughter took Cecilia Jupe off with them to Stone Lodge, and on the way Louisa never spoke one word, good or bad. And Mr. Bounderby went about his daily pursuits. And Mrs. Sparsit got behind her eyebrows and meditated in the gloom of that retreat, all the evening.

Let us strike the keynote again, before pursuing the tune.

When she was half a dozen years younger, Louisa had been overheard to begin a conversation with her brother one day, by saying “Tom, I wonder”⁠—upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing, stepped forth into the light and said, “Louisa, never wonder!”

Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder. Bring to me, says M’Choakumchild, yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it shall never wonder.

Now, besides very many babies just able to walk, there happened to be in Coketown a considerable population of babies who had been walking against time towards the infinite world, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and more. These portentous infants being alarming creatures to stalk about in any human society, the eighteen denominations incessantly scratched one another’s faces and pulled one another’s hair by way of agreeing on the steps to be taken for their improvement⁠—which they never did; a surprising circumstance, when the happy adaptation of the means to the end is considered. Still, although they differed in every other particular, conceivable and inconceivable (especially inconceivable), they were pretty well united on the