Bounderby threw on his hat - he always threw it on, as expressing a man who had been far too busily employed in making himself, to acquire any fashion of wearing his hat - and with his hands in his pockets, sauntered out into the hall. ′I never wear gloves,′ it was his custom to say. ′I didn′t climb up the ladder in them. - Shouldn′t be so high up, if I had.′
Being left to saunter in the hall a minute or two while Mr. Gradgrind went up-stairs for the address, he opened the door of the children′s study and looked into that serene floor-clothed apartment, which, notwithstanding its book-cases and its cabinets and its variety of learned and philosophical appliances, had much of the genial aspect of a room devoted to hair-cutting. Louisa languidly leaned upon the window looking out, without looking at anything, while young Thomas stood sniffing revengefully at the fire. Adam Smith and Malthus, two younger Gradgrinds, were out at lecture in custody; and little Jane, after manufacturing a good deal of moist pipe-clay on her face with slate-pencil and tears, had fallen asleep over vulgar fractions.
′It′s all right now, Louisa: it′s all right, young Thomas,′ said Mr. Bounderby; ′you won′t do so any more. I′ll answer for it′s being all over with father. Well, Louisa, that′s worth a kiss, isn′t it?′
′You can take one, Mr. Bounderby,′ returned Louisa, when she had coldly paused, and slowly walked across the room, and ungraciously raised her cheek towards him, with her face turned away.
′Always my pet; ain′t you, Louisa?′ said Mr. Bounderby. ′Good-bye, Louisa!′
He went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing the cheek he had kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning red. She was still doing this, five minutes afterwards.
′What are you about, Loo?′ her brother sulkily remonstrated. ′You′ll rub a hole in your face.′
′You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom. I wouldn′t cry!′
CHAPTER V - THE KEYNOTE
COKETOWN, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune.
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.
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