Then Mr. Gradgrind and his daughter took Cecilia Jupe off with them to Stone Lodge, where she speedily grew as pale as wax, and as heavy-eyed as all the other victims of Mr. Gradgrind's practical system of training. She had not an easy time of it, between Mr. M'Choakumchild and Mrs. Gradgrind, and was not without strong impulses, in the first months of her probation, to run away. It hailed facts all day long, so very hard, and life in general was opened to her as such a closely ruled ciphering book, that assuredly she would have run away, but for only one restraint. She believed that her father had not deserted her; she lived in the hope that he would come back, and in the faith that he would be made the happier by her remaining where she was. The wretched ignorance with which Jupe clung to this consolation, rejecting the superior comfort of knowing on a sound arithmetical basis that her father was an unnatural vagabond, filled Mr. Gradgrind with pity. Yet, what was to be done? Mr. M'Choakumchild reported that she had a very dense head for figures; that, once possessed with a general idea of the globe, she took the smallest conceivable interest in its exact measurements; that after eight weeks of induction into the elements of Political Economy, she had only yesterday returned to the question, "What is the first principle of this science?" the absurd answer, "To do unto others as I would that they should do unto me." 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.