Mrs. Gradgrind meekly and weakly hoped that his mother⁠—

“ My mother? Bolted, ma’am!” said Bounderby.

Mrs. Gradgrind, stunned as usual, collapsed and gave it up.

“My mother left me to my grandmother,” said Bounderby; “and, according to the best of my remembrance, my grandmother was the wickedest and the worst old woman that ever lived. If I got a little pair of shoes by any chance, she would take ’em off and sell ’em for drink. Why, I have known that grandmother of mine lie in her bed and drink her fourteen glasses of liquor before breakfast!”

Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of vitality, looked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed transparency of a small female figure, without enough light behind it.