behold but his own metallurgical Louisa peeping
with all her might through a hole in a
deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas
abasing himself on the ground to catch but a
hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower
act!

Dumb with amazement, Mr Gradgrind
crossed to the spot where his family was thus
disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring
child, and said:

"Louisa!! Thomas!!"

Both rose, red and disconcerted. But,
Louisa looked at her father with more boldness
than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas did not
look at him, but gave himself up to be taken
home like a machine.

"In the name of wonder, idleness, and
folly!" said Mr. Gradgrind, leading each
away by a hand; "what do you do here?"

"Wanted to see what it was like," returned
Louisa shortly.

"What it was like?"

"Yes, father."

There was an air of jaded sullenness in them
both, and particularly in the girl: yet, struggling
through the dissatisfaction of her face,
there was a light with nothing to rest upon,
a fire with nothing to burn, a starved
imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which
brightened its expression. Not with the
brightness natural to cheerful youth, but with
uncertain, eager, doubtful flashes, which had
something painful in them, analogous to the
changes on a blind face groping its way.

She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen;
but at no distant day would seem to become
a woman all at once. Her father thought so
as he looked at her. She was pretty. Would
have been self-willed (he thought in his
eminently practical way) but for her
bringing-up.

"Thomas, though I have the fact before
me, I find it difficult to believe that you, with
your education and resources, should have
brought your sister to a scene like this."

"I brought him, father," said Louisa,
quickly. "I asked him to come."

"I am sorry to hear it. I am very sorry
indeed to hear it. It makes Thomas no
better, and it makes you worse, Louisa."

She looked at her father again, but no tear
fell down her cheek.

"You! Thomas and you, to whom the circle
of the sciences is open, Thomas and you who
may be said to be replete with facts, Thomas
and you who have been trained to mathematical
exactness, Thomas and you here!" cried
Mr. Gradgrind. "In this degraded position!
I am amazed."

"I was tired, father. I have been tired a
long time," said Louisa.

"Tired? Of what?" asked the astonished
father.

"I don't know of what—of everything I
think."

"Say not another word," returned Mr.
Gradgrind. "You are childish. I will hear
no more." He did not speak again until they
had walked some half-a-mile in silence, when
he gravely broke out with: "What would
your best friends say, Louisa? Do you
attach no value to their good opinion? What
would Mr. Bounderby say?"

At the mention of this name, his daughter
stole a look at him, remarkable for its intense
and searching character. He saw nothing of
it, for before he looked at her she had again
cast down her eyes!

"What," he repeated presently, "would
Mr. Bounderby say?" All the way to Stone
Lodge, as with grave indignation he led the
two delinquents home, he repeated at intervals,
"What would Mr. Bounderby say?"—
as if Mr. Bounderby had been Mrs. Grundy.

ORANGES AND LEMONS.

As we listen to the street-child, crying
"fine Saint Michael's, four a-penny!" how
many of us have bestowed a single thought
upon the many interests involved, the many
energies brought into action, in the production
and transport of these fruits from the south
to our cold, dull countries of the north!
How few of us have any conception of the
vast tracts of land required to rear these
pleasant products of the soil: of the hands
employed in the culture: of the beautiful ships,
of the noble steam-vessels engaged in
transporting them from foreign lands to these
shores: of the railway-trains employed at
certain seasons, to whisk the cooling cargoes
from Southampton to London, while their
consumers are sleeping in their beds: of
the large piles of massive warehouses
required to store, to sample, and to sell them
by auction: of the mean squalor and
desolation of the great retail orange-mart in
Duke's Place: of the thousands of men,
women, and children who draw a
subsistence from their sale in the streets, in
steamboats, at fairs, in theatres, or wherever
people congregate. It may be well to know
something of all this, and to learn how
important a part is thus played in a densely
peopled country, by articles apparently so
insignificant as oranges and lemons, and
moreover, how it is that this fruit, coming
to us from enormous distances at great cost,
is sold in our streets at a cheaper rate than
our own apples and pears.

The reader will scarcely need to be told
that the trade in oranges is of much greater
extent than that in lemons. In London alone
it has been computed that there are annually
sold not fewer than one hundred millions of
the former fruit and twenty millions of the
latter: about one-fourth of the oranges being
disposed of in the streets and theatres. This
street business in fruit is a trade of some
antiquity, dating back beyond the reign of Queen
Elizabeth, and growing until at the present
time there cannot be less than seven thousand