e young girl in a
trembling voice and with another curtsy.

"Then he has no business to do it," said Mr. Gradgrind.
"Tell him he mustn't. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What 15
is your father?"

"He belongs to the horse riding, if you please, sir."

Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable
calling with his hand.

"We don't want to know anything about that, here. 20
You mustn't tell us about that, here. Your father breaks
horses, don't he?"

"If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they
do break horses in the ring, sir."

"You mustn't tell us about the ring, here. Very well, 25
then. Describe your father as a horse breaker. He
doctors sick horses, I dare say."

"Oh, yes, sir!"

"Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier,
and a horse breaker. Give me your definition of a horse." 30

Sissy Jupe was thrown into the greatest alarm by this
demand.

"Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!" said
Mr. Gradgrind. "Girl number twenty possessed of no
facts in reference to one of the commonest of animals!
Some boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours."

The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly 5
on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the
same ray of sunlight which irradiated Sissy.

"Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind, "your definition of a
horse."

"Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth: namely, 10
twenty-four grinders, four eyeteeth, and twelve incisors.
Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs
too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron.
Age known by marks in the mouth."

"Now, girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, "you 15
know what a horse is."

She curtsied again and would have blushed deeper, if she
could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this
time.

The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at 20
cutting and drying, was he; a government officer; always
in training, always with a system to force down the general
throat, always to be heard of at the bar of his little public
office.

"Very well," said this gentleman briskly, smiling and 25
folding his arms. "That's a horse. Now, let me ask you,
girls and boys, would you paper a room with representations
of horses?"