seful to Mrs. Gradgrind, and you are serviceable in the family
also; so I understand from Miss Louisa, and indeed, so I have observed
myself. I therefore hope," said Mr. Gradgrind, "that you can make
yourself happy in those relations."

"I should have nothing to wish, sir, if--"

"I understand you," said Mr. Gradgrind; "you refer to your father. I
have heard from Miss Louisa that you still preserve that bottle. Well!
If your training in the science of arriving at exact results had been
more successful, you would have been wiser on these points. I will
say no more."

He really liked Sissy too well to have contempt for her. Somehow or
other, he had become possessed by an idea that there was something in
this girl which could hardly be set forth in a tabular form; that there
was something in her composition which defied the cold analysis of Fact;
that there was some great virtue in her loving-kindness which more than
compensated for her deficiencies of mind.

From that time Sissy lived at Stone Lodge on equal terms with the rest
of the family, and after Louisa's marriage, cared for fretful Mrs.
Gradgrind in her invalidism, with a sweet patience that endeared her to
the poor woman. Indeed the entire household were deeply attached to
Sissy, and, seeing the unselfishness of her daily life, even Mr.
Gradgrind himself was forced to acknowledge that there was a greater
Teacher than M'Choakumchild, with a system of education superior to the
Gradgrind system, and that the same great Teacher had educated the
clown's daughter to a higher degree of usefulness and courage than the
Gradgrind system had yet been able to produce.

In fact, as time went on, Mr. Gradgrind was slowly discovering the flaws
in his mathematical theories; finding out that laws and logic can never
take the place of love in the development of a nature, and the discovery
was a bitter one to him.

Despite their careful bringing-up by rule and measure, neither Louisa
nor Thomas Gradgrind, in their maturity, did any credit to their
father's system, and when his mistakes with them became evident to the
cold, proud man, and he realized how nearly he had wrecked their lives
by those errors, the weight of his suffering was heavy upon him. Then,
realizing that all the Facts in his storehouse of learning, could not
teach him how to save his children, and win their love, it was to Sissy
that he turned for the information that he needed.

When young Thomas Gradgrind