»that
perhaps I tried to learn too much, and that if I had asked to be allowed to try
a little less, I might have -«
    »No, Jupe, no,« said Mr. Gradgrind, shaking his head in his profoundest and
most eminently practical way. »No. The course you pursued, you pursued according
to the system - the system - and there is no more to be said about it. I can
only suppose that the circumstances of your early life were too unfavourable to
the development of your reasoning powers, and that we began too late. Still, as
I have said already, I am disappointed.«
    »I wish I could have made a better acknowledgment, sir, of your kindness to
a poor forlorn girl who had no claim upon you, and of your protection of her.«
    »Don't shed tears,« said Mr. Gradgrind. »Don't shed tears. I don't complain
of you. You are an affectionate, earnest, good young woman - and - and we must
make that do.«
    »Thank you, sir, very much,« said Sissy, with a grateful curtsey.
    »You are useful to Mrs. Gradgrind, and (in a generally pervading way) you
are serviceable in the family also; so I understand from Miss Louisa, and,
indeed, so I have observed myself. I therefore hope,« said Mr. Gradgrind, »that
you can make yourself happy in those relations.«
    »I should have nothing to wish, sir, if -«
    »I understand you,« said Mr. Gradgrind; »you still refer to your father. I
have heard from Miss Louisa that you still preserve that bottle. Well! If your
training in the science of arriving at exact results had been more successful,
you would have been wiser on these points. I will say no more.«
    He really liked Sissy too well to have a contempt for her; otherwise he held
her calculating powers in such very slight estimation that he must have fallen
upon that conclusion. Somehow or other, he had become possessed by an idea that
there was something in this girl which could hardly be set forth in a tabular
form. Her capacity of definition might be easily stated at a very low figure,
her mathematical knowledge at nothing; yet he was not sure that if he had been
required, for example, to tick her off into columns in a parliamentary return,
he would have quite known how to divide her.
    In some stages of his manufacture of the human fabric