“We don’t want to know anything about that here. You mustn’t tell us about that here. Your father breaks horses, don’t he?”
“If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.”
“You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then, describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.”
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
“Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!” said Mr. Gradgrind for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. “Girl number twenty possessed of no facts in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.”
Bitzer: “Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely, twenty-four grinders, four eyeteeth, and twelve incisors. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring 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 a horse is.”
The keen edge of Dickens’s sarcasm will be felt when it is remembered that Sissy Jupe was born among horses, had lived with them, played with them, and ridden them all her life, but was “ignorant of the commonest facts regarding a horse.” She could not define a horse.