Now, these persistent assuagements of his misery, and lightenings of his load, had by this time begun to have the effect of making Mr. Bounderby softer than usual towards Mrs. Sparsit, and harder than usual to most other people from his wife downward. So, when Mrs. Sparsit said with forced lightness of heart, “You want your breakfast, sir, but I daresay Miss Gradgrind will soon be here to preside at the table,” Mr. Bounderby replied, “If I waited to be taken care of by my wife, ma’am, I believe you know pretty well I should wait till Doomsday, so I’ll trouble you to take charge of the teapot.” Mrs. Sparsit complied, and assumed her old position at table.
This again made the excellent woman vastly sentimental. She was so humble withal, that when Louisa appeared, she rose, protesting she never could think of sitting in that place under existing circumstances, often as she had the honour – of making Mr. Bounderby’s breakfast, before Mrs. Gradgrind – she begged pardon, she meant to say, Miss Bounderby – she hoped to be excused, but she really could not get it right yet, though she trusted to become familiar with it by and by – had assumed her present position. It was only (she observed) because Miss Gradgrind happened to be a little late, and Mr. Bounderby’s time is so very precious, and she knew it of old to be so essential that he should breakfast to the moment, that she had taken the liberty of complying with his request, long as his will had been a law to her.
“There! Stop where you are, ma’am,” said Mr. Bounderby, “stop where you are! Mrs. Bounderby will be very glad to be relieved of the trouble, I believe.”
“Don’t say that, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, almost with severity, “because that is very unkind to Mrs. Bounderby. And to be unkind is not to be you, sir.”
“You may set your mind at rest, ma’am. – You can take it can take it very quietly, can’t you, Loo?” said Mr. Bounderby, in a blustering way to his wife.
“Of course. It is of no moment. Why should it be of any importance to me?”
“Why should it be of any importance to any one, Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am?” said Mr. Bounderby, swelling with a sense of slight. “You attach too much importance to these things, ma’am. By George, you’ll be corrupted in some of your notions here. You are old fashioned, ma’am. You are behind Tom Gradgrind’s children’s time.”
“What is the matter with you?” asked Louisa, coldly surprised. “What has given you offence?”
“Offence!” repeated Bounderby. “Do you suppose if there was any offence given me, I shouldn’t name it, and request to have it corrected? I am a straightforward man, I believe. I don’t go beating about for side winds.”
“I suppose no one ever had occasion to think you too diffident, or too delicate,” Louisa answered him composedly: “I have never made that objection to you, either as a child or as a woman. I don’t understand what you would have.”
“Have?” returned Mr. Bounderby. “Nothing. Otherwise, don’t you, Loo Bounderby, know thoroughly well that I, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, would have it?”
She looked at him, as he struck the table and made the tea-cups ring, with a proud colour in her face that was a new change, Mr. Harthouse thought. “You are incomprehensible this morning,” said Louisa. “Pray take no further trouble to explain yourself. I am not curious to know your meaning. What does it matter!”
Nothing more was said on this theme, and Mr. Harthouse was soon idly gay on indifferent subjects. But from this day, the Sparsit action upon Mr. Bounderby threw Louisa and James Harthouse more together, and strengthened the dangerous alienation from her husband and confidence against him with another, into which she had fallen by degrees so fine that she could not retrace them if she tried. But, whether she ever tried or no, lay hidden in her own closed heart.
Mrs. Sparsit was so much affected on this particular occasion, that, assisting Mr. Bounderby to his hat after breakfast, and being then alone with him in the hall, she imprinted a chaste kiss upon his hand, murmured “My benefactor!” and retired, overwhelmed with grief. Yet it is an indubitable fact, within the cognizance of this history, that five minutes after he had left the house in the self-same hat, the same descendant of the Scadgerses and connexion by matrimony of the Powlers, shook her right-hand mitten at his portrait, made a contemptuous grimace at that work of art, and said “Serve you right, you Noodle, and I am glad of it!”