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Book The First - Sowing | Charles Dickens | |
Chapter IV - Mr. Bounderby |
Page 2 of 5 |
Mrs. Gradgrind faintly looked at the tongs, as the most appropriate thing her imbecility could think of doing. 'How I fought through it, I don't know,' said Bounderby. 'I was determined, I suppose. I have been a determined character in later life, and I suppose I was then. Here I am, Mrs. Gradgrind, anyhow, and nobody to thank for my being here, but myself.' 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 four-teen 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. 'She kept a chandler's shop,' pursued Bounderby, 'and kept me in an egg-box. That was the cot of my infancy; an old egg-box. As soon as I was big enough to run away, of course I ran away. Then I became a young vagabond; and instead of one old woman knocking me about and starving me, everybody of all ages knocked me about and starved me. They were right; they had no business to do anything else. I was a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest. I know that very well.' |
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Hard Times Charles Dickens |
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