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

number twenty stopped then, palpitating, and made him a curtsey.

“Why are you tearing about the streets,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “in this improper manner?”

“I was⁠—I was run after, sir,” the girl panted, “and I wanted to get away.”

“Run after?” repeated Mr. Gradgrind. “Who would run after you?”

The question was unexpectedly and suddenly answered for her, by the colourless boy, Bitzer, who came round the corner with such blind speed and so little anticipating a stoppage on the pavement, that he brought himself up against Mr. Gradgrind’s waistcoat and rebounded into the road.

“What do you mean, boy?” said Mr. Gradgrind. “What are you doing? How dare you dash against⁠—everybody⁠—in this manner?” Bitzer picked up his cap, which the concussion had knocked off; and backing, and knuckling his forehead, pleaded that it was an accident.

“Was this boy running after you, Jupe?” asked Mr. Gradgrind.

“Yes, sir,” said the girl reluctantly.

“No, I wasn’t, sir!” cried Bitzer. “Not till she run away from me. But the horse-riders never mind what they say, sir; they’re famous for it. You know the horse-riders are famous for never minding what they say,” addressing Sissy. “It’s as well known in the town as⁠—please, sir, as the multiplication table isn’t known to the horse-riders.” Bitzer tried Mr. Bounderby with this.

“He frightened me so,” said the girl, “with his cruel faces!”

“Oh!” cried Bitzer. “Oh! An’t you one of the rest! An’t you a horse-rider! I never looked at her, sir. I asked her if she would know how to define a horse tomorrow, and offered to tell her again, and she ran away, and I ran after her, sir, that she might know how to answer when she was asked. You wouldn’t have thought of saying such mischief if you hadn’t been a horse-rider?”

“Her calling seems to be pretty well known among ’em,” observed Mr. Bounderby. “You’d have had the whole school peeping in a row, in a week.”

“Truly, I think so,” returned his friend. “Bitzer, turn you about and take yourself home. Jupe, stay here a moment. Let me hear of your running in this manner any more, boy, and you will hear of me through the master of the school. You understand what I mean. Go along.”

The boy stopped in his rapid blinking, knuckled his forehead again, glanced at Sissy, turned about, and retreated.

“Now, girl,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “take this gentleman and me to your father’s; we are going there. What have you got in that bottle you are carrying?”

“Gin,” said Mr. Bounderby.

“Dear, no, sir! It’s the nine oils.”

“The what?” cried Mr. Bounderby.

“The nine oils, sir, to rub father with.”

“Then,” said Mr. Bounderby, with a loud short laugh, “what the devil do you rub your father with nine oils for?”

“It’s what our people aways use, sir, when they get any hurts in the ring,” replied the girl, looking over her shoulder, to assure herself that her pursuer was gone. “They bruise themselves very bad sometimes.”

“Serve ’em right,” said Mr. Bounderby, “for being idle.” She glanced up at his face, with mingled astonishment and dread.

“By George!” said Mr. Bounderby, “when I was four or five years younger than you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, twenty oils, forty oils, would have rubbed off. I didn’t get ’em by posture-making, but by being banged about. There was no rope-dancing for me; I danced on the bare ground and was larruped with the rope.”

Mr. Gradgrind, though hard enough, was by no means so rough a man as Mr. Bounderby. His character was not unkind, all things considered; it might have been a very kind one indeed, if he had only made some round mistake in the arithmetic that balanced it, years ago. He said, in what he meant for a reassuring tone, as they turned down a narrow road, “And this is Pod’s End; is it, Jupe?”

“This is it, sir, and⁠—if you wouldn’t mind, sir⁠—this is the house.”

She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public-house, with dim red lights in it. As haggard and as shabby, as if, for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone the way all drunkards go, and was very near the end of it.

“It’s only crossing the bar, sir, and up the stairs, if you wouldn’t mind, and waiting there for a moment till I get a candle. If you should hear a dog, sir, it’s only Merrylegs, and he only barks.”

“Merrylegs and nine oils, eh!” said Mr. Bounderby, entering last with his metallic laugh. “Pretty well this, for a self-made man!”

VI Sleary’s Horsemanship

The name of the public-house was the Pegasus’s Arms. The Pegasus’s legs might have been more to the purpose; but, underneath the winged horse upon the signboard, the Pegasus’s Arms was inscribed in Roman letters. Beneath that inscription again, in a flowing scroll, the painter had touched off the lines:

Good malt makes good beer,
Walk in, and they’ll draw it here;
Good wine makes good brandy,
Give us a call, and you’ll find it handy.

Framed and glazed upon the wall behind the dingy little bar, was another Pegasus⁠—a theatrical one⁠—with real gauze let in for his wings, golden stars stuck on all over him, and his ethereal harness made of red silk.

As it had grown too dusky without, to see the sign, and as it had not grown light enough within to see the picture, Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby received no offence from these idealities. They followed the girl up some steep corner-stairs without meeting anyone, and stopped in the dark while she went on for a candle. They expected every moment to hear Merrylegs give tongue, but the highly trained performing dog had not barked when the girl and the candle appeared together.

“Father is not in our room, sir,” she said, with a face of great surprise. “If you wouldn’t mind walking in, I’ll find him directly.” They walked in; and Sissy, having set two chairs for them, sped away with a quick light step. It was a mean, shabbily furnished room, with a bed in it. The white nightcap, embellished with two peacock’s feathers