my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these
children. Stick to facts, sir."

Mr. Gradgrind, having waited to hear a model lesson delivered by the
school master, walked home in a considerable state of satisfaction.

There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They
had been lectured at from their tenderest years; coursed, like little
hares, almost as soon as they could run, they had been made to run to
the lecture-room.

To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr. Gradgrind
directed his steps. The house was situated on a moor, within a mile or
two of a great town, called Coketown.

On the outskirts of this town a travelling circus ("Sleary's
Horse-riding") had pitched its tent, and, to his amazement, Mr.
Gradgrind observed his two eldest children trying to obtain a peep, at
the back of the booth, of the hidden glories within.

Mr. Gradgrind laid his hand upon the shoulder of each erring child, and
said, "Louisa! Thomas!"

"I wanted to see what it was like," said Louisa shortly. "I brought him,
I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time."

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

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

They walked on in silence for some half a mile before Mr. Gradgrind
gravely broke out with, "What would your best friends say, Louisa? What
would Mr. Bounderby say?"

All the way to Stone Lodge he repeated at intervals, "What would Mr.
Bounderby say?"

At the first mention of the name his daughter, a child of fifteen or
sixteen now, but at no distant day to become a woman, all at once, 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.

Mr. Bounderby was at Stone Lodge when they arrived. He stood before the
fire on the hearth rug, delivering some observations to Mrs. Gradgrind
on the circumstance of its being his birthday. It was a commanding
position from which to subdue Mrs. Gradgrind.

He stopped in his harangue, which was entirely concerned with the story
of his early disadvantages, at the entrance of his eminently practical
friend and the two young culprits.

"Well!" blustered Mr. Bounderby, "what's the matter? What is young
Thomas in the dumps about?"

He spoke of young Thomas, but he looked at Louisa.

"We were peeping at the circus," muttered Louisa haughtily; "and father
caught us."