“Ay, ay? Has resources of her own,” said Harthouse.
“Not so much of that as you may suppose,” returned Tom; “for our governor had her crammed with all sorts of dry bones and sawdust. It’s his system.”
“Formed his daughter on his own model?” suggested Harthouse.
“His daughter? Ah! and everybody else. Why, he formed me that way,” said Tom.
“Impossible!”
“He did though,” said Tom, shaking his head. “I mean to say, Mr. Harthouse, that when I first left home and went to old Bounderby’s, I was as flat as a warming-pan, and knew no more about life than any oyster does.”
Dickens describes a visit Louisa made to her father’s house, and shows how little of the true home feeling was stirred in her heart, as she approached the place, where she should have had a happy childhood.
Neither, as she approached her old home now, did any of the best influences of old home descend upon her. Her remembrances of home and childhood were remembrances of the drying up of every spring and fountain in her young heart as it gushed out. The golden waters were not there. They were flowing for the fertilization of the land where grapes are gathered from thorns, and figs from thistles.
When her father proposed to Louisa that she should marry Mr. Bounderby, she said:
“The baby preference that even I have heard of as common among children has never had its innocent resting place in my breast. You have been so careful of me, that I never had a child’s heart. You have trained me so well, that I never dreamed a child’s dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, father, from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child’s belief or a child’s fear.”