Hard Times, Charles Dickens [mobile ebook reader .TXT] 📗

s forehead and face. His skin was sounwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked asthough, if he were cut, he would bleed white.

'Bitzer,' said Thomas Gradgrind. 'Your definition of a horse.'

'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-fourgrinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in thespring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, butrequiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.'Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

'Now girl number twenty,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'You know what ahorse is.'

She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she couldhave blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer,after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once,and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes thatthey looked like the antennae of busy insects, put his knuckles tohis freckled forehead, and sat down again.

The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and