 of smoothing and managing, Tom? Is it a secret?«
    »Oh!« said Tom, »if it is a secret, it's not far off. It's you. You are his
little pet, you are his favourite; he'll do anything for you. When he says to me
what I don't like, I shall say to him, My sister Loo will be hurt and
disappointed, Mr. Bounderby. She always used to tell me she was sure you would
be easier with me than this. That'll bring him about, or nothing will.«
    After waiting for some answering remark, and getting none, Tom wearily
relapsed into the present time, and twined himself yawning round and about the
rails of his chair, and rumpled his head more and more, until he suddenly looked
up, and asked:
    »Have you gone to sleep, Loo?«
    »No, Tom. I am looking at the fire.«
    »You seem to find more to look at in it than ever I could find,« said Tom.
»Another of the advantages, I suppose, of being a girl.«
    »Tom,« enquired his sister, slowly, and in a curious tone, as if she were
reading what she asked in the fire, and it were not quite plainly written there,
»do you look forward with any satisfaction to this change to Mr. Bounderby's?«
    »Why, there's one thing to be said of it,« returned Tom, pushing his chair
from him, and standing up; »it will be getting away from home.«
    »There is one thing to be said of it,« Louisa repeated in her former curious
tone; »it will be getting away from home. Yes.«
    »Not but what I shall be very unwilling, both to leave you, Loo, and to
leave you here. But I must go, you know, whether I like it or not; and I had
better go where I can take with me some advantage of your influence, than where
I should lose it altogether. Don't you see?«
    »Yes, Tom.«
    The answer was so long in coming, though there was no indecision in it, that
Tom went and leaned on the back of her chair, to contemplate the fire which so
engrossed her, from her point of view, and see what he could make of it.
    »Except that it is a fire,« said Tom, »it looks to me as stupid
