“Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, A breath can make them, as a breath has made,”

it was, for certain, more or less understood among the company that he had heard of Mrs. Sparsit.

“ Mr. Bounderby,” said Mrs. Sparsit, “you are unusually slow, sir, with your breakfast this morning.”

“Why, ma’am,” he returned, “I am thinking about Tom Gradgrind’s whim;” Tom Gradgrind, for a bluff independent manner of speaking⁠—as if somebody were always endeavouring to bribe him with immense sums to say Thomas, and he wouldn’t; “Tom Gradgrind’s whim, ma’am, of bringing up the tumbling-girl.”