Soon after seven o’clock, we went down to dinner. The dinner was long, because of such accidents as the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal scuttle. Mrs. Jellyby paid no attention to such matters and told us all about the various committees, and the five thousand circulars that were sent out. After dinner, Mr. Jellyby sat in a corner in a state of great dejection. I sat in another and told Peepy, in whispers, the story of Puss in Boots, until Mrs. Jellyby, accidentally remembering the children, sent them to bed. As Peepy cried for me to take him, I carried him up-stairs. “What a strange house!” said Ada, when we got up-stairs. “My love,” said I, “it quite confuses me. I can’t understand it.” “What?” asked Ada. “All this, my dear,” said I. “It _must_ be very good of Mrs. Jellyby to take such pains about a scheme for the benefit of Natives--and yet--Peepy and the housekeeping!” SISSY JUPE X SISSY JUPE DICKENS called the novel in which Sissy Jupe appears _Hard Times_. It was certainly hard times for children who had to go to the kind of schools that Mr. Thomas Gradgrind believed in. Mr. Gradgrind was a big square man, with a square coat and square shoulders, who thought that he knew all about education. He thought that the children in the schoolroom were like so many little pitchers, and the teacher’s business was to fill them with facts. “Now, what I want is Facts,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle for these children. Stick to Facts.” Mr. Gradgrind, with another gentleman, had come to visit the school. Now Sissy Jupe was a bright little girl who would really enjoy using her own mind, but she didn’t know how to use Mr. Gradgrind’s mind, and she was very much upset when the great man pointed his square finger at her and said: * * * * * “Girl number twenty. I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?” “Sissy Jupe, sir,” explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and courtesying. “Sissy is not a name,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.” “It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,” returned the girl in a trembling voice, and with another courtesy. “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. You mustn’t tell us 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, sir.”