“There, there, there!” said Miss Wren.  “For goodness sake, stop, Giant, or I shall be swallowed up alive, before I know it.  And to this minute you haven’t said what you’ve come for?”

“I have come for little Miss Harmonses’ doll,” said Sloppy.

“I thought as much,” remarked Miss Wren, “and here is little Miss Harmonses’ doll waiting for you.  She’s folded up in silver paper, you see, as if she was wrapped from head to foot in new banknotes.  Take care of her—­and there’s my hand—­and thank you again.”

“I’ll take more care of her than if she was a gold image,” said Sloppy, “and there’s both my hands, Miss, and I’ll soon come back again!”

Here we leave the little dolls’ dressmaker, under the protecting care of her “godmother,” the first real guardian she has ever known, and with a new friendship to supply her life with that youthful intercourse which has never been hers.  And so in leaving her our hearts are light, for Miss Jenny Wren is brighter now, and happier now, and younger now, than ever before.

SISSY JUPE

[Illustration:  SISSY JUPE AND HER FATHER]

SISSY JUPE

“Now, what I want is, Facts.  Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.  Facts alone are wanted in life.  Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.  You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts:  nothing else will be of any service to them.  This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children.  Stick to Facts, sir!”

The scene was a bare, plain, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observation.  The emphasis was helped by his square wall of a forehead, by his thin and hardset mouth, by his inflexible and dictatorial voice, and by the hair which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, as if the head had scarcely warehouse room for the hard facts stowed inside.  The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,—­nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,—­all helped the emphasis.

“In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir!  Nothing but Facts!”

The speaker, Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, and the schoolmaster, Mr. M’Choakumchild, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of Facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.

“Girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, “I don’t know that girl.  Who is that girl?”

“Sissy Jupe, sir,” explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.

“Sissy is not a name,” said Mr. Gradgrind.  “Call yourself Cecilia.”