“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, without lifting up her eyes, “and father caught us.”
“And Mrs. Gradgrind,” said her husband in a lofty manner, “I should as soon have expected to find my children reading poetry.”
“Dear me,” whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind. “How can you, Louisa and Thomas! I wonder at you. I declare you’re enough to make one regret ever having had a family at all. I have a great mind to say I wish I hadn’t. Then what would you have done, I should like to know.”
Mr. Gradgrind did not seem favourably impressed by these cogent remarks. He frowned impatiently.
“As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you couldn’t go and look at the shells, and minerals and things provided for you, instead of circuses!” said Mrs. Gradgrind. “You know, as well as I do, no young people have circus masters, or keep circuses in cabinets, or attend lectures of circuses. What can you possibly want to know about circuses then? I am sure you have enough to do, if that’s what you want. With my head in its present state, I couldn’t remember the mere names of half the facts you have got to attend to.”
“That’s the reason!” pouted Louisa.
“Don’t tell me that’s the reason, because it can be nothing of the sort,” said Mrs. Gradgrind. “Go and be somethingological directly.” Mrs. Gradgrind was not a scientific character, and usually dismissed her children to their studies with this general injunction to choose their pursuit.
In truth, Mrs. Gradgrind’s stock of facts in general was woefully defective; but Mr. Gradgrind in raising her to her high matrimonial position, had been influenced by two reasons. Firstly, she was most satisfactory as a question of figures; and secondly, she had “no nonsense” about her. By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it is probable she was as free from any alloy of that nature, as any human being not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot, ever was.
The simple circumstance of being left alone with her her husband and Mr. Bounderby, was sufficient to stun this admirable lady again without collision between herself and any other fact. So, she once more died away, and nobody minded her.
“Bounderby,” said Mr. Gradgrind, drawing a chair to the fireside, “you are always so interested in my young people – particularly in Louisa – that I make no apology for saying to you, I am very much vexed by this discovery. I have systematically devoted myself (as you know) to the education of the reason of my family. The reason is (as you know) the only faculty to which education should be addressed. And yet, Bounderby, it would appear from this unexpected circumstance of to-day, though in itself a trifling one, as if something had crept into Thomas’s and Louisa’s minds which is – or rather, which is not – I don’t know that I can express myself better than by saying – which has never been intended to be developed, and in which their reason has no part.”
“There certainly is no reason in looking with interest at a parcel of vagabonds,” returned Bounderby. “When I was a vagabond myself, nobody loked with any interest at me; I know that.”
“Then comes the question,” said the eminently practical father, with his eyes on the fire, “in what has this vulgar curiosity its rise?”
“I’ll tell you in what. In idle imagination.”
“I hope not,” said the eminently practical; “I confess, however, the misgiving has crossed me on my way home.”
“In idle imagination, Gradgrind,” repeated Bounderby. “A very bad thing for anybody, but a cursed bad thing for a girl like Louisa. I should ask Mrs. Gradgrind’s pardon for strong expressions, but that she knows very well that I am not a refined character. Whoever expects refinement in me will be disappointed. I hadn’t a refined bringing up.”
“Whether,” said Mr. Gradgrind, pondering with his hands in his pockets, and his cavernous eyes on the fire, “whether any instructor or servant can have suggested anything? Whether Louisa or Thomas can have been reading anything? Whether, in spite of all precautions, any idle storybook can have got into the house? Because, in minds that have been practically formed by rule and line, from the cradle upwards, this is so curious, so incomprehensible.”