CHAPTER I

EFFECTS IN THE BANK

A SUNNY midsummer day. There was such a thing sometimes, even in

Coketown.

Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of

its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. You only knew the

town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky

blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now

confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of

Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell,

or changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross

light in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness:—Coketown in the

distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be

seen.

The wonder was, it was there at all. It had been ruined so often, that

it was amazing how it had borne so many shocks. Surely there never was

such fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of Coketown were

made. Handle them never so lightly, and they fell to pieces with such

ease that you might suspect them of having been flawed before. They were

ruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school;

they were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works;

they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether

they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery;

they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not

always make quite so much smoke. Besides Mr. Bounderby’s gold spoon

which was generally received in Coketown, another prevalent fiction was

very popular there. It took the form of a threat. Whenever a Coketowner

felt he was ill-used—that is to say, whenever he was not left entirely

alone, and it was proposed to hold him accountable for the consequences

of any of his acts—he was sure to come out with the awful menace, that he

would ‘sooner pitch his property into the Atlantic.’ This had terrified

the Home Secretary within an inch of his life, on several occasions.

However, the Coketowners were so patriotic after all, that they never had

pitched their property into the Atlantic yet, but, on the contrary, had

been kind enough to take mighty good care of it. So there it was, in the

haze yonder; and it increased and multiplied.

The streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the sun was so

bright that it even shone through the heavy vapour drooping over

Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily. Stokers emerged from low

underground doorways into factory yards, and sat on steps, and posts, and

palings, wiping their swarthy visages, and contemplating coals. The

whole town seemed to be frying in oil. There was a stifling smell of hot

oil everywhere. The steam-engines shone with it, the dresses of the

Hands were soiled with it, the mills throughout their many stories oozed

and trickled it. The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces was like the

breath of the simoom: and their inhabitants, wasting with heat, toiled

languidly in the desert. But no temperature made the melancholy mad

elephants more mad or more sane. Their wearisome heads went up and down

at the same rate, in hot weather and cold, wet weather and dry, fair

weather and foul. The measured motion of their shadows on the walls, was

the substitute Coketown had to show for the shadows of rustling woods;

while, for the summer hum of insects, it could offer, all the year round,

from the dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday, the whirr of shafts and

wheels.

Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the passenger

more sleepy and more hot as he passed the humming walls of the mills.

Sun-blinds, and sprinklings of water, a little cooled the main streets

and the shops; but the mills, and the courts and alleys, baked at a

fierce heat. Down upon the river that was black and thick with dye, some

Coketown boys who were at large—a rare sight there—rowed a crazy boat,

which made a spumous track upon the water as it jogged along, while every

dip of an oar stirred up vile smells. But the sun itself, however

beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and

rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engendering

more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself become an evil

eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed between it and the

things it looks upon to bless.

Mrs. Sparsit sat in her afternoon apartment at the Bank, on the shadier

side of the frying street. Office-hours were over: and at that period of

the day, in warm weather, she usually embellished with her genteel

presence, a managerial board-room over the public office. Her own

private sitting-room was a story higher, at the window of which post of

observation she was ready, every morning, to greet Mr. Bounderby, as he

came across the road, with the sympathizing recognition appropriate to a

Victim. He had been married now a year; and Mrs. Sparsit had never

released him from her determined pity a moment.

The Bank offered no violence to the wholesome monotony of the town. It

was another red brick house, with black outside shutters, green inside

blinds, a black street-door up two white steps, a brazen door-plate, and

a brazen door-handle full stop. It was a size larger than Mr.

Bounderby’s house, as other houses were from a size to half-a-dozen sizes

smaller; in all other particulars, it was strictly according to pattern.

Mrs. Sparsit was conscious that by coming in the evening-tide among the

desks and writing implements, she shed a feminine, not to say also

aristocratic, grace upon the office. Seated, with her needlework or

netting apparatus, at the window, she had a self-laudatory sense of

correcting, by her ladylike deportment, the rude business aspect of the

place. With this impression of her interesting character upon her, Mrs.

Sparsit considered herself, in some sort, the Bank Fairy. The

townspeople who, in their passing and repassing, saw her there, regarded

her as the Bank Dragon keeping watch over the treasures of the mine.

What those treasures were, Mrs. Sparsit knew as little as they did. Gold

and silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if divulged would bring

vague destruction upon vague persons (generally, however, people whom she

disliked), were the chief items in her ideal catalogue thereof. For the

rest, she knew that after office-hours, she reigned supreme over all the

office furniture, and over a locked-up iron room with three locks,

against the door of which strong chamber the light porter laid his head

every night, on a truckle bed, that disappeared at cockcrow. Further,

she was lady paramount over certain vaults in the basement, sharply

spiked off from communication with the predatory world; and over the

relics of the current day’s work, consisting of blots of ink, worn-out

pens, fragments of wafers, and scraps of paper torn so small, that

nothing interesting could ever be deciphered on them when Mrs. Sparsit

tried. Lastly, she was guardian over a little armoury of cutlasses and

carbines, arrayed in vengeful order above one of the official

chimney-pieces; and over that respectable tradition never to be separated

from a place of business claiming to be wealthy—a row of

fire-buckets—vessels calculated to be of no physical utility on any

occasion, but observed to exercise a fine moral influence, almost equal

to bullion, on most beholders.

A deaf serving-woman and the light porter completed Mrs. Sparsit’s

empire. The deaf serving-woman was rumoured to be wealthy; and a saying

had for years gone about among the lower orders of Coketown, that she

would be murdered some night when the Bank was shut, for the sake of her

money. It was generally considered, indeed, that she had been due some

time, and ought to have fallen long ago; but she had kept her life, and

her situation, with an ill-conditioned tenacity that occasioned much

offence and disappointment.

Mrs. Sparsit’s tea was just set for her on a pert little table, with its

tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after office-hours,

into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long board-table that

bestrode the middle of the room. The light porter placed the tea-tray on

it, knuckling his forehead as a form of homage.

‘Thank you, Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.

‘Thank _you_, ma’am,’ returned the light porter. He was a very light

porter indeed; as light as in the days when he blinkingly defined a

horse, for girl number twenty.

‘All is shut up, Bitzer?’ said Mrs. Sparsit.

‘All is shut up, ma’am.’

‘And what,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, pouring out her tea, ‘is the news of the

day? Anything?’

‘Well, ma’am, I can’t say that I have heard anything particular. Our

people are a bad lot, ma’am; but that is no news, unfortunately.’

‘What are the restless wretches doing now?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.

‘Merely going on in the old way, ma’am. Uniting, and leaguing, and

engaging to stand by one another.’

‘It is much to be regretted,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, making her nose more

Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her severity,

‘that the united masters allow of any such class-combinations.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Bitzer.

‘Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their faces

against employing any man who is united with any other man,’ said Mrs.

Sparsit.

‘They have done that, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer; ‘but it rather fell

through, ma’am.’

‘I do not pretend to understand these things,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with

dignity, ‘my lot having been signally cast in a widely different sphere;

and Mr. Sparsit, as a Powler, being also quite out of the pale of any

such dissensions. I only know that these people must be conquered, and

that it’s high time it was done, once for all.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, with a demonstration of great respect for

Mrs. Sparsit’s oracular authority. ‘You couldn’t put it clearer, I am

sure, ma’am.’

As this was his usual hour for having a little confidential chat with

Mrs. Sparsit, and as he had already caught her eye and seen that she was

going to ask him something, he made a pretence of arranging the rulers,

inkstands, and so forth, while that lady went on with her tea, glancing

through the open window, down into the street.

‘Has it been a busy day, Bitzer?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.

‘Not a very busy day, my lady. About an average day.’ He now and then

slided into my lady, instead of ma’am, as an involuntary acknowledgment

of Mrs. Sparsit’s personal dignity and claims to reverence.

‘The clerks,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, carefully brushing an imperceptible

crumb of bread and butter from her left-hand mitten, ‘are trustworthy,

punctual, and industrious, of course?’

‘Yes, ma’am, pretty fair, ma’am. With the usual exception.’

He held the respectable office of general spy and informer in the

establishment, for which volunteer service he received a present at

Christmas, over and above his weekly wage. He had grown into an

extremely clear-headed, cautious, prudent young man, who was safe to rise

in the world. His mind was so exactly regulated, that he had no

affections or passions. All his proceedings were the result of the

nicest and coldest calculation; and it was not without cause that Mrs.

Sparsit habitually observed of him, that he was a young man of the

steadiest principle she had ever known. Having satisfied himself, on his

father’s death, that his mother had a right of settlement in Coketown,

this excellent young economist had asserted that right for her with such

a steadfast adherence to the principle of the case, that she had been

shut up in the workhouse ever since. It must be admitted that he allowed

her half a pound of tea a year, which was weak in him: first, because all

gifts have an inevitable tendency to pauperise the recipient, and

secondly, because his only reasonable transaction in that commodity would

have been to buy it for as little as he could possibly give, and sell it

for as much as he could possibly get; it having been clearly ascertained

by philosophers that in this is comprised the whole duty of man—not a

part of man’s duty, but the whole.

‘Pretty fair, ma’am. With the usual exception, ma’am,’ repeated Bitzer.

‘Ah—h!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head over her tea-cup, and taking

a long gulp.

‘Mr. Thomas, ma’am, I doubt Mr. Thomas very much, ma’am, I don’t like his

ways at all.’

‘Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, in a very impressive manner, ‘do you

recollect my having said anything to you respecting names?’

‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. It’s quite true that you did object to names

being used, and they’re always best avoided.’

‘Please to remember that I have a charge here,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with

her air of state. ‘I hold a trust here, Bitzer, under Mr. Bounderby.

However improbable both Mr. Bounderby and myself might have deemed it

years ago, that he would ever become my patron, making me an annual

compliment, I cannot but regard him in that light. From Mr. Bounderby I

have received every acknowledgment of my social station, and every

recognition of my family descent, that I could possibly expect. More,

far more. Therefore, to my patron I will be scrupulously true. And I do

not consider, I will not consider, I cannot consider,’ said Mrs. Sparsit,

with a most extensive stock on hand of honour and morality, ‘that I

_should_ be scrupulously true, if I allowed names to be mentioned under

this roof, that are unfortunately—most unfortunately—no doubt of

that—connected with his.’

Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, and again begged pardon.

‘No, Bitzer,’ continued Mrs. Sparsit, ‘say an individual, and I will hear

you; say Mr. Thomas, and you must excuse me.’

‘With the usual exception, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, trying back, ‘of an

individual.’

‘Ah—h!’ Mrs. Sparsit repeated the ejaculation, the shake of the head

over her tea-cup, and the long gulp, as taking up the conversation again

at the point where it had been interrupted.

‘An individual, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘has never been what he ought to

have been, since he first came into the place. He is a dissipated,

extravagant idler. He is not worth his salt, ma’am. He wouldn’t get it

either, if he hadn’t a friend and relation at court, ma’am!’

‘Ah—h!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with another melancholy shake of her head.

‘I only hope, ma’am,’ pursued Bitzer, ‘that his friend and relation may

not supply him with the means of carrying on. Otherwise, ma’am, we know

out of whose pocket _that_ money comes.’

‘Ah—h!’ sighed Mrs. Sparsit again, with another melancholy shake of her

head.

‘He is to be pitied, ma’am. The last party I have alluded to, is to be

pitied, ma’am,’ said Bitzer.

‘Yes, Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘I have always pitied the delusion,

always.’

‘As to an individual, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, dropping his voice and drawing

nearer, ‘he is as improvident as any of the people in this town. And you

know what _their_ improvidence is, ma’am. No one could wish to know it

better than a lady of your eminence does.’

‘They would do well,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘to take example by you,

Bitzer.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. But, since you do refer to me, now look at me, ma’am.

I have put by a little, ma’am, already. That gratuity which I receive at

Christmas, ma’am: I never touch it. I don’t even go the length of my

wages, though they’re not high, ma’am. Why can’t they do as I have done,

ma’am? What one person can do, another can do.’

This, again, was among the fictions of Coketown. Any capitalist there,

who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to

wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn’t each make sixty

thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every

one for not accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why

don’t you go and do it?

‘As to their wanting recreations, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘it’s stuff and

nonsense. _I_ don’t want recreations. I never did, and I never shall; I

don’t like ’em. As to their combining together; there are many of them,

I have no doubt, that by watching and informing upon one another could

earn a trifle now and then, whether in money or good will, and improve

their livelihood. Then, why don’t they improve it, ma’am! It’s the

first consideration of a rational creature, and it’s what they pretend to

want.’

‘Pretend indeed!’ said Mrs. Sparsit.

‘I am sure we are constantly hearing, ma’am, till it becomes quite

nauseous, concerning their wives and families,’ said Bitzer. ‘Why look

at me, ma’am! I don’t want a wife and family. Why should they?’

‘Because they are improvident,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, ‘that’s where it is. If they were more

provident and less perverse, ma’am, what would they do? They would say,

“While my hat covers my family,” or “while my bonnet covers my

family,”—as the case might be, ma’am—“I have only one to feed, and that’s

the person I most like to feed.”’

‘To be sure,’ assented Mrs. Sparsit, eating muffin.

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, knuckling his forehead again, in return

for the favour of Mrs. Sparsit’s improving conversation. ‘Would you wish

a little more hot water, ma’am, or is there anything else that I could

fetch you?’

‘Nothing just now, Bitzer.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. I shouldn’t wish to disturb you at your meals, ma’am,

particularly tea, knowing your partiality for it,’ said Bitzer, craning a

little to look over into the street from where he stood; ‘but there’s a

gentleman been looking up here for a minute or so, ma’am, and he has come

across as if he was going to knock. That _is_ his knock, ma’am, no

doubt.’

He stepped to the window; and looking out, and drawing in his head again,

confirmed himself with, ‘Yes, ma’am. Would you wish the gentleman to be

shown in, ma’am?’

‘I don’t know who it can be,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, wiping her mouth and

arranging her mittens.

‘A stranger, ma’am, evidently.’

‘What a stranger can want at the Bank at this time of the evening, unless

he comes upon some business for which he is too late, I don’t know,’ said

Mrs. Sparsit, ‘but I hold a charge in this establishment from Mr.

Bounderby, and I will never shrink from it. If to see him is any part of

the duty I have accepted, I will see him. Use your own discretion,

Bitzer.’

Here the visitor, all unconscious of Mrs. Sparsit’s magnanimous words,

repeated his knock so loudly that the light porter hastened down to open

the door; while Mrs. Sparsit took the precaution of concealing her little

table, with all its appliances upon it, in a cupboard, and then decamped

up-stairs, that she might appear, if needful, with the greater dignity.

‘If you please, ma’am, the gentleman would wish to see you,’ said Bitzer,

with his light eye at Mrs. Sparsit’s keyhole. So, Mrs. Sparsit, who had

improved the interval by touching up her cap, took her classical features

down-stairs again, and entered the board-room in the manner of a Roman

matron going outside the city walls to treat with an invading general.

The visitor having strolled to the window, and being then engaged in

looking carelessly out, was as unmoved by this impressive entry as man

could possibly be. He stood whistling to himself with all imaginable

coolness, with his hat still on, and a certain air of exhaustion upon

him, in part arising from excessive summer, and in part from excessive

gentility. For it was to be seen with half an eye that he was a thorough

gentleman, made to the model of the time; weary of everything, and

putting no more faith in anything than Lucifer.

‘I believe, sir,’ quoth Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you wished to see me.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, turning and removing his hat; ‘pray excuse

me.’

‘Humph!’ thought Mrs. Sparsit, as she made a stately bend. ‘Five and

thirty, good-looking, good figure, good teeth, good voice, good breeding,

well-dressed, dark hair, bold eyes.’ All which Mrs. Sparsit observed in

her womanly way—like the Sultan who put his head in the pail of

water—merely in dipping down and coming up again.

‘Please to be seated, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.

‘Thank you. Allow me.’ He placed a chair for her, but remained himself

carelessly lounging against the table. ‘I left my servant at the railway

looking after the luggage—very heavy train and vast quantity of it in the

van—and strolled on, looking about me. Exceedingly odd place. Will you

allow me to ask you if it’s _always_ as black as this?’

‘In general much blacker,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, in her uncompromising

way.

‘Is it possible! Excuse me: you are not a native, I think?’

‘No, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘It was once my good or ill fortune,

as it may be—before I became a widow—to move in a very different sphere.

My husband was a Powler.’

‘Beg your pardon, really!’ said the stranger. ‘Was—?’

Mrs. Sparsit repeated, ‘A Powler.’

‘Powler Family,’ said the stranger, after reflecting a few moments. Mrs.

Sparsit signified assent. The stranger seemed a little more fatigued

than before.

‘You must be very much bored here?’ was the inference he drew from the

communication.

‘I am the servant of circumstances, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘and I have

long adapted myself to the governing power of my life.’

‘Very philosophical,’ returned the stranger, ‘and very exemplary and

laudable, and—’ It seemed to be scarcely worth his while to finish the

sentence, so he played with his watch-chain wearily.

‘May I be permitted to ask, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘to what I am

indebted for the favour of—’

‘Assuredly,’ said the stranger. ‘Much obliged to you for reminding me.

I am the bearer of a letter of introduction to Mr. Bounderby, the banker.

Walking through this extraordinarily black town, while they were getting

dinner ready at the hotel, I asked a fellow whom I met; one of the

working people; who appeared to have been taking a shower-bath of

something fluffy, which I assume to be the raw material—’

Mrs. Sparsit inclined her head.

‘—Raw material—where Mr. Bounderby, the banker, might reside. Upon

which, misled no doubt by the word Banker, he directed me to the Bank.

Fact being, I presume, that Mr. Bounderby the Banker does _not_ reside in

the edifice in which I have the honour of offering this explanation?’

‘No, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘he does not.’

‘Thank you. I had no intention of delivering my letter at the present

moment, nor have I. But strolling on to the Bank to kill time, and having

the good fortune to observe at the window,’ towards which he languidly

waved his hand, then slightly bowed, ‘a lady of a very superior and

agreeable appearance, I considered that I could not do better than take

the liberty of asking that lady where Mr. Bounderby the Banker _does_

live. Which I accordingly venture, with all suitable apologies, to do.’

The inattention and indolence of his manner were sufficiently relieved,

to Mrs. Sparsit’s thinking, by a certain gallantry at ease, which offered

her homage too. Here he was, for instance, at this moment, all but

sitting on the table, and yet lazily bending over her, as if he

acknowledged an attraction in her that made her charming—in her way.

‘Banks, I know, are always suspicious, and officially must be,’ said the

stranger, whose lightness and smoothness of speech were pleasant

likewise; suggesting matter far more sensible and humorous than it ever

contained—which was perhaps a shrewd device of the founder of this

numerous sect, whosoever may have been that great man: ‘therefore I may

observe that my letter—here it is—is from the member for this

place—Gradgrind—whom I have had the pleasure of knowing in London.’

Mrs. Sparsit recognized the hand, intimated that such confirmation was

quite unnecessary, and gave Mr. Bounderby’s address, with all needful

clues and directions in aid.

‘Thousand thanks,’ said the stranger. ‘Of course you know the Banker

well?’

‘Yes, sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit. ‘In my dependent relation towards

him, I have known him ten years.’

‘Quite an eternity! I think he married Gradgrind’s daughter?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, suddenly compressing her mouth, ‘he had

that—honour.’

‘The lady is quite a philosopher, I am told?’

‘Indeed, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘_Is_ she?’

‘Excuse my impertinent curiosity,’ pursued the stranger, fluttering over

Mrs. Sparsit’s eyebrows, with a propitiatory air, ‘but you know the

family, and know the world. I am about to know the family, and may have

much to do with them. Is the lady so very alarming? Her father gives

her such a portentously hard-headed reputation, that I have a burning

desire to know. Is she absolutely unapproachable? Repellently and

stunningly clever? I see, by your meaning smile, you think not. You

have poured balm into my anxious soul. As to age, now. Forty? Five and

thirty?’

Mrs. Sparsit laughed outright. ‘A chit,’ said she. ‘Not twenty when she

was married.’

‘I give you my honour, Mrs. Powler,’ returned the stranger, detaching

himself from the table, ‘that I never was so astonished in my life!’

It really did seem to impress him, to the utmost extent of his capacity

of being impressed. He looked at his informant for full a quarter of a

minute, and appeared to have the surprise in his mind all the time. ‘I

assure you, Mrs. Powler,’ he then said, much exhausted, ‘that the

father’s manner prepared me for a grim and stony maturity. I am obliged

to you, of all things, for correcting so absurd a mistake. Pray excuse

my intrusion. Many thanks. Good day!’

He bowed himself out; and Mrs. Sparsit, hiding in the window curtain, saw

him languishing down the street on the shady side of the way, observed of

all the town.

‘What do you think of the gentleman, Bitzer?’ she asked the light porter,

when he came to take away.

‘Spends a deal of money on his dress, ma’am.’

‘It must be admitted,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘that it’s very tasteful.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, ‘if that’s worth the money.’

‘Besides which, ma’am,’ resumed Bitzer, while he was polishing the table,

‘he looks to me as if he gamed.’

‘It’s immoral to game,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.

‘It’s ridiculous, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘because the chances are against

the players.’

Whether it was that the heat prevented Mrs. Sparsit from working, or

whether it was that her hand was out, she did no work that night. She

sat at the window, when the sun began to sink behind the smoke; she sat

there, when the smoke was burning red, when the colour faded from it,

when darkness seemed to rise slowly out of the ground, and creep upward,

upward, up to the house-tops, up the church steeple, up to the summits of

the factory chimneys, up to the sky. Without a candle in the room, Mrs.

Sparsit sat at the window, with her hands before her, not thinking much

of the sounds of evening; the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the

rumbling of wheels, the steps and voices of passengers, the shrill street

cries, the clogs upon the pavement when it was their hour for going by,

the shutting-up of shop-shutters. Not until the light porter announced

that her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs. Sparsit arouse herself

from her reverie, and convey her dense black eyebrows—by that time

creased with meditation, as if they needed ironing out-up-stairs.

‘O, you Fool!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, when she was alone at her supper. Whom

she meant, she did not say; but she could scarcely have meant the

sweetbread.