IX

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? 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 she was extremely slow in the acquisition of dates, unless some pitiful incident happened to be connected therewith; that she would burst into tears on being required (by the mental process) immediately to name the cost of two hundred and forty-seven muslin caps at fourteen-pence halfpenny; that she was as low down, in the school, as low could be; that after eight weeks of induction into the elements of Political Economy, she had only yesterday been set right by a prattler three feet high, for returning 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.”

Sissy submitted, after a little hesitation, “I should not be the worse, Miss Louisa.” To which Miss Louisa answered, “I don’t know that.”

“You don’t know,” said Sissy, half crying, “what a stupid girl I am. All through school hours I make mistakes. Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild call me up, over and over again, regularly to make mistakes. I can’t help them. They seem to come natural to me.”

“ Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild never make any mistakes themselves, I suppose, Sissy?”

“O no!” she eagerly returned. “They know everything.”

“Tell me some of your mistakes.”

“I am almost ashamed,” said Sissy, with reluctance. “But today, for instance, Mr. M’Choakumchild was explaining to us about Natural Prosperity.”

“National, I think it must have been,” observed Louisa.

“Yes, it was.⁠—But isn’t it the same?” she timidly asked.

“You had better say, National, as he said so,” returned Louisa, with her dry reserve.

“National Prosperity. 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?”

“What did you say?” asked Louisa.

“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.

“Yes, Miss Louisa, I know it was, now. Then Mr. M’Choakumchild said he would try me again. And he said, This schoolroom is an immense town, and in it there are a million of inhabitants, and only five-and-twenty are starved to death in the streets, in the course of a year. What is your remark on that proportion? And my remark was⁠—for I couldn’t think of a better one⁠—that I thought it must be just as hard upon those who were starved, whether the others were a million, or a million million. And that was wrong, too.”