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“I fear, Jupe,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “that your continuance at the school any longer would be useless.”

“I am afraid it would, sir,” Sissy answered with a curtsey.

“I cannot disguise from you, Jupe,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “that the result of your probation there has greatly disappointed me. You are extremely deficient in your facts. Your acquaintance with figures is very limited. You are altogether backward, and below the mark, yet I believe you have tried hard. I have observed you, and I can find no fault with you in that respect.”

“Thank you, sir. I have thought sometimes;” Sissy faltered, “that perhaps I tried to learn too much, and that if I had asked to be allowed to try a little less, I might have–“

“No, Jupe, no,” said Mr. Gradgrind, shaking his head. “No. The course you pursued, you pursued according to the system, and there is no more to be said about it. I can only suppose that the circumstances of your early life were too unfavorable to the development of your reasoning powers, and that we began too late. Still, as I have said already, I am disappointed.”

“I wish I could have made a better acknowledgment, sir, of your kindness to a poor forlorn girl who had no claim upon you, and of your protection of her.” said Sissy, weeping.

“Don’t shed tears,” added Mr. Gradgrind, “I don’t complain of you. You are an affectionate, earnest, good young woman, and we must make that do.”

“Thank you, sir, very much,” said Sissy, with a grateful curtsey.

“You are useful to Mrs. Gradgrind, and you are serviceable in the family also; so I understand from Miss Louisa, and indeed, so I have observed myself. I therefore hope,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “that you can make yourself happy in those relations.”

“I should have nothing to wish, sir, if–“

“I understand you,” said Mr. Gradgrind; “you refer to your father. I have heard from Miss Louisa that you still preserve that bottle. Well! If your training in the science of arriving at exact results had been more successful, you would have been wiser on these points. I will say no more.”

He really liked Sissy too well to have contempt for her. Somehow or other, he had become possessed by an idea that there was something in this girl which could hardly be set forth in a tabular form; that there was something in her composition which defied the cold analysis of Fact; that there was some great virtue in her loving-kindness which more than compensated for her deficiencies of mind.

From that time Sissy lived at Stone Lodge on equal terms with the rest of the family, and after Louisa’s marriage, cared for fretful Mrs. Gradgrind in her invalidism, with a sweet patience that endeared her to the poor woman. Indeed the entire household were deeply attached to Sissy, and, seeing the unselfishness of her daily life, even Mr. Gradgrind himself was forced to acknowledge that there was a greater Teacher than M’Choakumchild, with a system of education superior to the Gradgrind system, and that the same great Teacher had educated the clown’s daughter to a higher degree of usefulness and courage than the Gradgrind system had yet been able to produce.

In fact, as time went on, Mr. Gradgrind was slowly discovering the flaws in his mathematical theories; finding out that laws and logic can never take the place of love in the development of a nature, and the discovery was a bitter one to him.

Despite their careful bringing-up by rule and measure, neither Louisa nor Thomas Gradgrind, in their maturity, did any credit to their father’s system, and when his mistakes with them became evident to the cold, proud man, and he realized how nearly he had wrecked their lives by those errors, the weight of his suffering was heavy upon him. Then, realizing that all the Facts in his storehouse of learning, could not teach him how to save his children, and win their love, it was to Sissy that he turned for the information that he needed.