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'

'Didn't do what he ought to do. Was short in his leaps and bad in
his tumbling,' Mr. Childers interpreted.

'Oh!' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'that is tip, is it?'

'In a general way that's missing his tip,' Mr. E. W. B. Childers
answered.

'Nine oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and Ponging,
eh!' ejaculated Bounderby, with his laugh of laughs. 'Queer sort
of company, too, for a man who has raised himself!'

'Lower yourself, then,' retorted Cupid. 'Oh Lord! if you've raised
yourself so high as all that comes to, let yourself down a bit.'

'This is a very obtrusive lad!' said Mr. Gradgrind, turning, and
knitting his brows on him.

'We'd have had a young gentleman to meet you, if we had known you
were coming,' retorted Master Kidderminster, nothing abashed.
'It's a pity you don't have a bespeak, being so particular. You're
on the Tight-Jeff, ain't you?'

'What does this unmannerly boy mean,' asked Mr. Gradgrind, eyeing
him in a sort of desperation, 'by Tight-Jeff?'

'There! Get out, get out!' said Mr. Childers, thrusting his young
friend from the room, rather in the prairie manner. 'Tight-Jeff or
Slack-Jeff, it don't much signify: it's only tight-rope and slack-
rope. You were going to give me a message for Jupe?'

'Yes, I was.'

'Then,' continued Mr. Childers, quickly, 'my opinion is, he will
never receive it. Do you know much of him?'

'I never saw the man in my life.'

'I doubt if you ever will see him now. It's pretty plain to me,
he's off.'

'Do you mean that he has deserted his daughter?'

'Ay! I mean,' said Mr. Childers, with a nod, 'that he has cut. He
was goosed last night, he was goosed the night before last, he was
goosed to-day. He has lately got in the way of being always
goosed, and he can't stand it.'

'Why has he been - so very much - Goosed?' asked Mr. Gradgrind,
forcing the word out of himself, with great solemnity and
reluctance.

'His joints are turning stiff, and he is getting used up,' said
Childers. 'He has his points as a Cackler still, but he can't get
a living out of them.'

'A Cackler!' Bounderby repeated. 'Here we go again!'

'A speaker, if the gentleman likes it better,' said Mr. E. W. B.
Childers, superciliously throwing the interpretation over his
shoulder, and accompanying it with a shake of his long hair - which
all shook at once. 'Now, it's a remarkable fact, sir, that it cut
that man deeper, to know that his daughter knew of his being
goosed, than to go through with it.'

'Good!' interrupted Mr. Bounderby. 'This is good, Gradgrind! A
man so fond of his daughter, that he runs away from her! This is
devilish good! Ha! ha! Now, I'll tell you what, young man. I
haven't always occupied my present station of life. I know what
these things are. You may be astonished to hear it, but my mother
- ran away from me.'

E. W. B. Childers replied pointedly, that he was not at all
astonished to hear it.

'Very well,' said Bounderby. 'I was born in a ditch, and my mother

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