BOOK THE FIRST - SOWING
3. Chapter Iii - a Loophole (continued)
A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and the
young rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to look for
any child he knew by name, and might order off. Phenomenon almost
incredible though distinctly seen, what did he then behold but his
own metallurgical Louisa, peeping with all her might through a hole
in a deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas abasing himself on
the ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean
flower-act!
Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrind crossed to the spot where his
family was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child,
and said:
'Louisa!! Thomas!!'
Both rose, red and disconcerted. But, Louisa looked at her father
with more boldness than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas did not look at
him, but gave himself up to be taken home like a machine.
'In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly!' said Mr. Gradgrind,
leading each away by a hand; 'what do you do here?'
'Wanted to see what it was like,' returned Louisa, shortly.
'What it was like?'
'Yes, father.'
There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly
in the girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her
face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with
nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself
somehow, which brightened its expression. Not with the brightness
natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager, doubtful
flashes, which had something painful in them, analogous to the
changes on a blind face groping its way.
She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen; but at no distant day
would seem to become a woman all at once. Her father thought so as
he looked at her. She was pretty. Would have been self-willed (he
thought in his eminently practical way) but for her bringing-up.
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