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own metallurgical Louisa, peeping with all her might through a hole
in a deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas abasing himself on
the ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean
flower-act!

Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrind crossed to the spot where his
family was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child,
and said:

'Louisa!! Thomas!!'

Both rose, red and disconcerted. But, Louisa looked at her father
with more boldness than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas did not look at
him, but gave himself up to be taken home like a machine.

'In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly!' said Mr. Gradgrind,
leading each away by a hand; 'what do you do here?'

'Wanted to see what it was like,' returned Louisa, shortly.

'What it was like?'

'Yes, father.'

There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly
in the girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her
face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with
nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself
somehow, which brightened its expression. Not with the brightness
natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager, doubtful
flashes, which had something painful in them, analogous to the
changes on a blind face groping its way.

She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen; but at no distant day
would seem to become a woman all at once. Her father thought so as
he looked at her. She was pretty. Would have been self-willed (he
thought in his eminently practical way) but for her bringing-up.

'Thomas, though I have the fact before me, I find it difficult to
believe that you, with your education and resources, should have
brought your sister to a scene like this.'

'I brought him, father,' said Louisa, quickly. 'I asked him to
come.'

'I am sorry to hear it. I am very sorry indeed to hear it. It
makes Thomas no better, and it makes you worse, Louisa.'

She looked at her father again, but no tear fell down her cheek.

'You! Thomas and you, to whom the circle of the sciences is open;
Thomas and you, who may be said to be replete with facts; Thomas
and you, who have been trained to mathematical exactness; Thomas
and you, here!' cried Mr. Gradgrind. 'In this degraded position!
I am amazed.'

'I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time,' said Louisa.

'Tired? Of what?' asked the astonished father.

'I don't know of what - of everything, I think.'

'Say not another word,' returned Mr. Gradgrind. 'You are childish.
I will hear no more.' He did not speak again until they had walked
some half-a-mile in silence, when he gravely broke out with: 'What
would your best friends say, Louisa? Do you attach no value to
their good opinion? What would Mr. Bounderby say?' At the mention
of this name, his daughter stole a look at him, remarkable for its
intense and searching character. He saw nothing of it, for before
he looked at her, she had again cast down her eyes!

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