Hard Times, Charles Dickens [little red riding hood ebook txt] 📗

Mr. Gradgrind looked out of window, and made no reply. Mr. Sleary emptied his glass and recalled the ladies.

“Thethilia my dear, kith me and goodbye! Mith Thquire, to thee you treating of her like a thithter, and a thithter that you trutht and honour with all your heart and more, ith a very pretty thight to me. I hope your brother may live to be better detherving of you, and a greater comfort to you. Thquire, thake handth, firtht and latht! Don’t be croth with uth poor vagabondth. People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a working, they an’t made for it. You mutht have uth, Thquire. Do the withe thing and the kind thing too, and make the betht of uth; not the wurtht!”

“And I never thought before,” said Mr. Sleary, putting his head in at the door again to say it, “that I wath tho muth of a cackler!”

It is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself. Mr. Bounderby felt that Mrs. Sparsit had audaciously anticipated him, and presumed to be wiser than he. Inappeasably indignant with her for her triumphant discovery of Mrs. Pegler, he turned this presumption, on the part of a woman in her dependent position, over and over in his mind, until it accumulated with turning like a great snowball. At last he made the discovery that to discharge this highly connected female⁠—to have it in his power to say, “She was a woman of family, and wanted to stick to me, but I wouldn’t have it, and got rid of her”⁠—would be to get the utmost possible amount of crowning glory out of the connection, and at the same time to punish Mrs. Sparsit according to her deserts.

Filled fuller than ever, with this great idea, Mr. Bounderby came in to lunch, and sat himself down in the dining-room of former days, where his portrait was. Mrs. Sparsit sat by the fire, with her foot in her cotton stirrup, little thinking whither she was posting.

Since the Pegler affair, this gentlewoman had covered her pity for Mr. Bounderby with a veil of quiet melancholy and contrition. In virtue thereof, it had become her habit to assume a woeful look, which woeful look she now bestowed upon her patron.

“What’s the matter now, ma’am?” said Mr. Bounderby, in a very short, rough way.

“Pray, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, “do not bite my nose off.”

“Bite your nose off, ma’am?” repeated Mr. Bounderby. “Your nose!” meaning, as Mrs. Sparsit conceived, that it was too developed a nose for the purpose. After which offensive implication, he cut himself a crust of bread, and threw the knife down with a noise.

Mrs. Sparsit took her foot out of her stirrup, and said, “Mr. Bounderby, sir!”

“Well, ma’am?” retorted Mr. Bounderby. “What are you staring at?”

“May I ask, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit, “have you been ruffled this morning?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“May I inquire, sir,” pursued the injured woman, “whether I am the unfortunate cause of your having lost your temper?”

“Now, I’ll tell you what, ma’am,” said Bounderby, “I am not come here to be bullied. A female may be highly connected, but she can’t be permitted to bother and badger a man in my position, and I am not going to put up with it.” (Mr. Bounderby felt it necessary to get on: foreseeing that if he allowed of details, he would be beaten.)

Mrs. Sparsit first elevated, then knitted, her Coriolanian eyebrows; gathered up her work into its proper basket; and rose.

“Sir,” said she, majestically. “It is apparent to me that I am in your way at present. I will retire to my own apartment.”

“Allow me to open the door, ma’am.”

“Thank you, sir; I can do it for myself.”

“You had better allow me, ma’am,” said Bounderby, passing her, and getting his hand upon the lock; “because I can take the opportunity of saying a word to you, before you go. Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, I rather think you are cramped here, do you know? It appears to me, that, under my humble roof, there’s hardly opening enough for a lady of your genius in other people’s affairs.”

Mrs. Sparsit gave him a look of the darkest scorn, and said with great politeness, “Really, sir?”

“I have been thinking it over, you see, since the late affairs have happened, ma’am,” said Bounderby; “and it appears to my poor judgment⁠—”

“Oh! Pray, sir,” Mrs. Sparsit interposed, with sprightly cheerfulness, “don’t disparage your judgment. Everybody knows how unerring Mr. Bounderby’s judgment is. Everybody has had proofs of it. It must be the theme of general conversation. Disparage anything in yourself but your judgment, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit, laughing.

Mr. Bounderby, very red and uncomfortable, resumed:

“It appears to me, ma’am, I say, that a different sort of establishment altogether would bring out a lady of your powers. Such an establishment as your relation, Lady Scadgers’s, now. Don’t you think you might find some affairs there, ma’am, to interfere with?”

“It never occurred to me before, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit; “but now you mention it, should think it highly probable.”

“Then suppose you try, ma’am,” said Bounderby, laying an envelope with a cheque in it in her little basket. “You can take your own time for going, ma’am; but perhaps in the meanwhile, it will be more agreeable to a lady of your powers of mind, to eat her meals by herself, and not to be intruded upon. I really ought to apologise to you⁠—being only Josiah Bounderby of Coketown⁠—for having stood in your light so long.”

“Pray don’t name it, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit. “If that portrait could speak, sir⁠—but it has the advantage over the original of not possessing the power of committing itself and disgusting others⁠—it would testify, that a long period has elapsed since I first habitually addressed it as the picture of a Noodle. Nothing that a Noodle does, can awaken surprise or indignation; the proceedings of a Noodle can only inspire contempt.”

Thus saying, Mrs. Sparsit, with her Roman features like a medal struck to commemorate her scorn of Mr. Bounderby, surveyed him