“It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,” returned the young girl with another curtsey.

“Then he has no business to do it,” said Mr. Gradgrind.  “Tell him he mustn’t.  Cecilia Jupe.  Let me see.  What is your father?”

“He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.”

Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.

“We don’t want to know anything about that here.  Your father breaks horses, don’t he?”

“If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring.”

“You mustn’t tell us about the ring here.  Very well, then.  Describe your father as a horse-breaker.  He doctors sick horses, I dare say?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Very well, then.  He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier and horse-breaker.  Give me your definition of a horse.”

(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand).

“Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!” said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers.  “Girl number twenty possessed of no facts in reference to one of the commonest of animals!  Some boy’s definition of a horse.  Bitzer, yours!”

“Quadruped.  Graminivorous.  Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive.  Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs too.  Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron.  Age known by marks in mouth.”  Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

“Now, girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “you know what a horse is.”

She curtsied again, blushed, and sat down, and the third gentleman present stepped forth, briskly smiling and folding his arms.  “That’s a horse,” he said.  “Now, let me ask you, boys and girls, would you paper a room with representations of horses?”

After a pause, one-half of the children cried in chorus, “Yes, sir!” Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman’s face that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, “No, sir!”

“Of course, No.  Why wouldn’t you?”

A pause.  One boy ventured the answer, because he wouldn’t paper a room at all, but would paint it.

“You must paper it,” said Thomas Gradgrind, “whether you like it or not.  Don’t tell us you wouldn’t paper it.  What do you mean, boy?”

“I’ll explain to you then,” said the gentleman, after another pause, “why you wouldn’t paper a room with a representation of horses.  Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality—­in fact?  Of course, No.  Why then, you are not to see anywhere what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere what you don’t have in fact.  This is a new principle, a great discovery,” said the gentleman.  “Now I’ll try you again.  Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?”

“There being a general conviction by this time that, ‘No sir!’ was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of No was very strong.  Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes; among them Sissy Jupe.”