Hard Times

Gradgrind and Bounderby follow Sissy into the Pegasus's Arms — a mean, dim little public-house — and up to her father's room. The trunk is open and empty. His costumes, his performing dog Merrylegs, everything is gone. Before the truth arrives, E. W. B. Childers does: a barrel-chested, short-legged acrobat who smells of lamp-oil and sawdust and speaks the circus's own language ('goosed,' 'missed his tip,' 'Cackler'). He tells Gradgrind plainly — Jupe has cut. He's been failing at his acts for weeks, the audience has been booing him, and the shame of Sissy knowing it seems to have broken him. He slipped out with his hat over his eyes and a bundle under his arm. The circus company gathers in the room one by one — acrobats, tightrope walkers, riders, their children who play fairies when required. Dickens pauses to note that their combined literature 'would have produced but a poor letter on any subject,' and yet there was 'a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and pity one another.' Then Mr. Sleary appears: stout, one fixed eye, one rolling eye, a voice like a broken bellows that cannot manage the letter S, never sober and never drunk. Sissy comes back running. She sees their faces. She sees her father is not there. She breaks into a cry and takes refuge on the bosom of Emma Gordon, the pregnant tightrope lady, who kneels on the floor to nurse her. Bounderby announces the fact — her father has absconded, she must not expect to see him again. The circus people respond: 'Shame!' from the men, 'Brute!' from the women. Sleary quietly warns Bounderby he may be thrown out the window. Gradgrind offers Sissy a choice: come with him to be educated, or stay with Sleary as an apprentice. The condition is that she cut all ties with the circus permanently. Sleary offers her the alternative with equal honesty. When Gradgrind mentions her father's own wish for her education, Sissy stops crying and decides. She says goodbye to everyone in the company, weeping. She refuses to leave behind the bottle of nine oils — she keeps it for her father, for when he comes back. Sleary's parting words contain his whole philosophy: 'People mutht be amuthed, Thquire, thomehow. They can't be alwayth a working, nor yet they can't be alwayth a learning. Make the betht of uth: not the wurtht!' He hands her to Gradgrind 'as to a horse.'