ur father, and those people I found you among,
I dare say?" said Mr. Gradgrind.

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

"Never mind Merrylegs, Jupe," said Mr. Gradgrind with a frown. "I don't
ask about him. I understand you have been in the habit of reading to
your father, and what did you read to him, Jupe?"

"About the fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, and the
Genies," she sobbed out: "And about--"

"Hush!" exclaimed Mr. Gradgrind, "that is enough. Never breathe a word
of such destructive nonsense any more."

Then Mr. Gradgrind and his daughter took Cecilia Jupe off with them to
Stone Lodge, where she speedily grew as pale as wax, and as heavy-eyed
as all the other victims of Mr. Gradgrind's practical system of
training. She had not an easy time of it, between Mr. M'Choakumchild and
Mrs. Gradgrind, and was not without strong impulses, in the first months
of her probation, to run away. It hailed facts all day long, so very
hard, and life in general was opened to her as such a closely ruled
ciphering book, that assuredly she would have run away, but for only one
restraint. She believed that her father had not deserted her; she lived
in the hope that he would come back, and in the faith that he would be
made the happier by her remaining where she was.

The wretched ignorance with which Jupe clung to this consolation,
rejecting the superior comfort of knowing on a sound arithmetical basis
that her father was an unnatural vagabond, filled Mr. Gradgrind with
pity. Yet, what was to be done? Mr. M'Choakumchild reported that she had
a very dense head for figures; that, once possessed with a general idea
of the globe, she took the smallest conceivable interest in its exact
measurements; that after eight weeks of induction into the elements of
Political Economy, she had only yesterday returned to the question,
"What is the first principle of this science?" the absurd answer, "To do
unto others as I would that they should do unto me."

Mr. Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was very bad;
that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of
knowledge, and that Jupe must be "kept to it." So Jupe was kept to it,
and became low spirited, but no wiser.

"It would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Louisa!" She said one night,
when Louisa had endeavored to make her perplexities for next day
something clearer to her, to which L