ground, consisting of the busiest of the neighbours to the number of some five-and-twenty, closed in after Sissy and Rachael, as they closed in after Mrs Sparsit and her prize; and the whole body made a disorderly irruption into Mr Bounderby’s dining-room, where the people behind lost not a moment’s time in mounting on the chairs, to get the better of the people in front.

‘Fetch Mr Bounderby down!’ cried Mrs Sparsit. ‘Rachael, young woman; you know who this is?’

‘It’s Mrs Pegler,’ said Rachael.

‘I should think it is!’ cried Mrs Sparsit, exulting. ‘Fetch Mr Bounderby. Stand away, everybody!’ Here old Mrs Pegler, muffling herself up, and shrinking from observation, whispered a word of entreaty. ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Mrs Sparsit, aloud. ‘I have told you twenty times, coming along, that I will not leave you till I have handed you over to him myself.’

Mr Bounderby now appeared, accompanied by Mr Gradgrind and the whelp, with whom he had been holding conference up-stairs. Mr Bounderby looked more astonished than hospitable, at sight of this uninvited party in his dining-room.

‘Why, what’s the matter now!’ said he. ‘Mrs Sparsit, ma’am?’

‘Sir,’ explained that worthy woman, ‘I trust it is my good fortune to produce a person you have much desired to find. Stimulated by my wish to relieve your mind, sir, and connecting together such imperfect clues to the part of the country in which that person might be supposed to reside, as have been afforded by the young woman, Rachael, fortunately now present to identify, I have had the happiness to succeed, and to bring that person with me — I need not say most unwillingly on her part. It has not been, sir, without some trouble that I have effected this; but trouble in your service is to me a pleasure, and hunger, thirst, and cold a real gratification.’

Here Mrs Sparsit ceased; for Mr Bounderby’s visage exhibited an extraordinary combination of all possible colours and expressions of discomfiture, as old Mrs Pegler was disclosed to his view.

‘Why, what do you mean by this?’ was his highly unexpected demand, in great warmth. ‘I ask you, what do you mean by this, Mrs Sparsit, ma’am?’

‘Sir!’ exclaimed Mrs Sparsit, faintly.

‘Why don’t you mind your own business, ma’am?’ roared Bounderby. ‘How dare you go and poke your officious nose into my family affairs?’

This allusion to her favourite feature overpowered Mrs Sparsit. She sat down stiffly in a chair, as if she were frozen; and with a fixed stare at Mr Bounderby, slowly grated her mittens against one another, as if they were frozen too.

‘My dear Josiah!’ cried Mrs Pegler, trembling. ‘My darling boy! I am not to blame. It’s not my fault, Josiah. I told this lady over and over again, that I knew she was doing what would not be agreeable to you, but she would do it.’

‘What did you let her bring you for? Couldn’t you knock her cap off, or her tooth out, or scratch her, or do something or other to her?’ asked Bounderby.

‘My own boy! She threatened me that if I resisted her, I should be brought by constables, and it was better to come quietly than make that stir in such a — ’ Mrs Pegler glanced timidly but proudly round the walls — ‘such a fine house as this. Indeed, indeed, it is not my fault! My dear, noble, stately boy! I have always lived quiet, and secret, Josiah, my dear. I have never broken the condition once. I have never said I was your mother. I have admired you at a distance; and if I have come to town sometimes, with