and I know the smoke of this town, and I know the Hands of this town. I know ’em all pretty well. They’re real. When a man tells me anything about imaginative qualities, I always tell that man, whoever he is, that I know what he means. He means turtle-soup and venison, with a gold spoon, and that he wants to be set up with a coach and six. That’s what your daughter wants. Since you are of opinion that she ought to have what she wants, I recommend you to provide it for her. Because, Tom Gradgrind, she will never have it from me.’

‘Bounderby,’ said Mr Gradgrind, ‘I hoped, after my entreaty, you would have taken a different tone.’

‘Just wait a bit,’ retorted Bounderby; ‘you have said your say, I believe. I heard you out; hear me out, if you please. Don’t make yourself a spectacle of unfairness as well as inconsistency, because, although I am sorry to see Tom Gradgrind reduced to his present position, I should be doubly sorry to see him brought so low as that. Now, there’s an incompatibility of some sort or another, I am given to understand by you, between your daughter and me. I’ll give you to understand, in reply to that, that there unquestionably is an incompatibility of the first magnitude — to be summed up in this — that your daughter don’t properly know her husband’s merits, and is not impressed with such a sense as would become her, by George! of the honour of his alliance. That’s plain speaking, I hope.’

‘Bounderby,’ urged Mr Gradgrind, ‘this is unreasonable.’

‘Is it?’ said Bounderby. ‘I am glad to hear you say so. Because when Tom Gradgrind, with his new lights, tells me that what I say is unreasonable, I am convinced at once it must be devilish sensible. With your permission I am going on. You know my origin; and you know that for a good many years of my life I didn’t want a shoeing-horn, in consequence of not having a shoe. Yet you may believe or not, as you think proper, that there are ladies — born ladies — belonging to families — Families! — who next to worship the ground I walk on.’

He discharged this like a Rocket, at his father-in-law’s head.

‘Whereas your daughter,’ proceeded Bounderby, ‘is far from being a born lady. That you know, yourself. Not that I care a pinch of candle-snuff about such things; for you are very well aware I don’t; but that such is the fact, and you, Tom Gradgrind, can’t change it. Why do I say this?’

‘Not, I fear,’ observed Mr Gradgrind, in a low voice, ‘to spare me.’

‘Hear me out,’ said Bounderby, ‘and refrain from cutting in till your turn comes round. I say this, because highly connected females have been astonished to see the way in which your daughter has conducted herself, and to witness her insensibility. They have wondered how I have suffered it. And I wonder myself now, and I won’t suffer it.’

‘Bounderby,’ returned Mr Gradgrind, rising, ‘the less we say tonight the better, I think.’

‘On the contrary, Tom Gradgrind, the more we say tonight, the better, I think. That is,’ the consideration checked him, ‘till I have said all I mean to say, and then I don’t care how soon we stop. I come to a question that may shorten the business. What do you mean by the proposal you made just now?’

‘What do I mean, Bounderby?’

‘By your visiting proposition,’ said Bounderby, with an inflexible jerk of the hayfield.

‘I mean that I hope you may be induced to arrange in a friendly manner, for allowing Louisa a period of repose and reflection here, which may tend to a gradual alteration for the better in many respects.’

‘To a softening down of your ideas of the incompatibility?’ said Bounderby.

‘If you put it in those terms.’