Mr. Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was very bad; that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of knowledge, and that Jupe must be “kept to it.”  So Jupe was kept to it, and became low spirited, but no wiser.

“It would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Louisa!” She said one night, when Louisa had endeavored to make her perplexities for next day something clearer to her, to which Louisa answered, “I don’t know that, Sissy.  You are more useful to my mother.  You are pleasanter to yourself, than I am to myself.”

“But, if you please, Miss Louisa,” Sissy pleaded, “I am—­Oh so stupid!  All through school hours I make mistakes.  To-day for instance, Mr. M’Choakumchild was explaining to us about Natural Prosperity.”

“National, I think it must have been,” observed Louisa.

“National Prosperity,” corrected Sissy, “and he said, Now, this schoolroom is a Nation, and in this nation there are fifty millions of money.  Isn’t this a prosperous nation?  Girl number twenty.  Isn’t this a prosperous nation, and a’n’t you in a thriving state?  Miss Louisa, I said I didn’t know.  I thought I couldn’t know whether it was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a thriving state or not, unless I knew who had got the money, and whether any of it was mine.  But that had nothing to do with it.  It was not in the figures at all,” said Sissy, wiping her eyes.

“That was a great mistake of yours,” observed Louisa.

“Yes, Miss Louisa, I know it was now.  Then Mr. M’Choakumchild said he would try me again.  And he said, This Schoolroom is an immense town, and in it there are a million inhabitants, and only five-and-twenty are starved to death in the streets, in the course of a year.  What is your remark on that proportion?  And my remark was, that I thought it must be just as hard upon those who were starved, whether the others were a million or a million million.  And that was wrong too.  Then Mr. M’Choakumchild said he would try me once more.  And he said That in a given time a hundred thousand persons went to sea on long voyages, and only five hundred of them were drowned or burned to death.  What is the percentage?  And I said, Miss;” here Sissy fairly sobbed in confessing to her great error; “I said it was nothing, Miss—­to the relations and friends of the people who were killed—­I shall never learn,” said Sissy.  “And the worst of all is, that although my poor father wished me so much to learn, and although I am so anxious to learn, because he wished me to, I am afraid I don’t like it.”

Louisa stood looking at the pretty, modest head, as it drooped abashed before her, until it was raised again to glance at her face.  Then she asked: 

“Did your father know so much himself, that he wished you to be well taught too?”

Sissy hesitated before replying, for this was forbidden ground, but Louisa insisted upon continuing the conversation.