‘You are quite another father to Louisa, sir.’ Mrs. Sparsit took a little more tea; and, as she bent her again contracted eyebrows over her steaming cup, rather looked as if her classical countenance were invoking the infernal gods.

‘If you had said I was another father to Tom—young Tom, I mean, not my friend Tom Gradgrind—you might have been nearer the mark. I am going to take young Tom into my office. Going to have him under my wing, ma’am.’

‘Indeed? Rather young for that, is he not, sir?’ Mrs. Spirit’s ‘sir,’ in addressing Mr. Bounderby, was a word of ceremony, rather exacting consideration for herself in the use, than honouring him.

‘I’m not going to take him at once; he is to finish his educational cramming before then,’ said Bounderby. ‘By the Lord Harry, he’ll have enough of it, first and last! He’d open his eyes, that boy would, if he knew how empty of learning _my_ young maw was, at his time of life.’ Which, by the by, he probably did know, for he had heard of it often enough. ‘But it’s extraordinary the difficulty I have on scores of such subjects, in speaking to any one on equal terms. Here, for example, I have been speaking to you this morning about tumblers. Why, what do _you_ know about tumblers? At the time when, to have been a tumbler in the mud of the streets, would have been a godsend to me, a prize in the lottery to me, you were at the Italian Opera. You were coming out of the Italian Opera, ma’am, in white satin and jewels, a blaze of splendour, when I hadn’t a penny to buy a link to light you.’

‘I certainly, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a dignity serenely mournful, ‘was familiar with the Italian Opera at a very early age.’

‘Egad, ma’am, so was I,’ said Bounderby, ‘—with the wrong side of it. A hard bed the pavement of its Arcade used to make, I assure you. People like you, ma’am, accustomed from infancy to lie on Down feathers, have no idea _how_ hard a paving-stone is, without trying it. No, no, it’s of no use my talking to _you_ about tumblers. I should speak of foreign dancers, and the West End of London, and May Fair, and lords and ladies and honourables.’

‘I trust, sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, with decent resignation, ‘it is not necessary that you should do anything of that kind. I hope I have learnt how to accommodate myself to the changes of life. If I have acquired an interest in hearing of your instructive experiences, and can scarcely hear enough of them, I claim no merit for that, since I believe it is a general sentiment.’