On the outskirts of this town a travelling circus ("Sleary's Horse-riding") had pitched its tent, and, to his amazement, Mr. Gradgrind observed his two eldest children trying to obtain a peep, at the back of the booth, of the hidden glories within.
Mr. Gradgrind laid his hand upon the shoulder of each erring child, and said, "Louisa! Thomas!"
"I wanted to see what it was like," said Louisa shortly. "I brought him, I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time."
"Tired? Of what?" asked the astonished father.
"I don't know of what--of everything, I think."
They walked on in silence for some half a mile before Mr. Gradgrind gravely broke out with, "What would your best friends say, Louisa? What would Mr. Bounderby say?"
All the way to Stone Lodge he repeated at intervals, "What would Mr. Bounderby say?"
At the first mention of the name his daughter, a child of fifteen or sixteen now, but at no distant day to become a woman, all at once, stole a look at him, remarkable for its intense and searching character. He saw nothing of it, for before he looked at her, she had again cast down her eyes.
Mr. Bounderby was at Stone Lodge when they arrived. He stood before the fire on the hearth rug, delivering some observations to Mrs. Gradgrind on the circumstance of its being his birthday. It was a commanding position from which to subdue Mrs. Gradgrind.
He stopped in his harangue, which was entirely concerned with the story of his early disadvantages, at the entrance of his eminently practical friend and the two young culprits.