"Oh! " said Tom, laughing; " I don't mind
that. I shall very well know how to manage
and smoothe old Bounderby!"

Their shadows were defined upon the wall,
but those of the high presses in the room
were all blended together on the wall and on
the ceiling, as if the brother and sister were
overhung by a dark cavern. Or, a fanciful
imagination—if such treason could have been
there—might have made it out to be the
shadow of their subject, and of its lowering
association with their future.

"What is your great mode of smoothing and
managing, Tom? Is it a secret?"

"Oh! " said Tom, " if it is a secret, it's not
far off. It's you. You are his little pet,
you are his favourite; he'll do anything for
you. When he says to me what I don't like,
I shall say to him, ' My sister Loo will be
hurt and disappointed, Mr. Bounderby. She
always used to tell me she was sure you would
be easier with me than this.' That'll bring
him about, or nothing will."

After waiting for some answering remark,
and getting none, Tom wearily relapsed into
the present time, and twined himself yawning
round and about the rails of his chair, and
rumpled his head more and more, until he
suddenly looked up, and asked:

"Have you gone to sleep, Loo?"

"No, Tom. I am looking at the fire."

"You seem to find more to look at in it
than ever I could find," said Tom. "Another
of the advantages, I suppose, of being a girl."

"Tom," enquired his sister, slowly, and in
a curious tone, as if she were reading what
she asked, in the fire, and it were not quite
plainly written there, " do you look forward
with any satisfaction to this change to Mr.
Bounderby's?"

"Why, there's one thing to be said of it,"
returned Tom, pushing his chair from him, and
standing up; " it will be getting away from
home."

"There is one thing to be said of it," Louisa
repeated in her former curious tone; "it will
be getting away from home. Yes."

"Not but what I shall be very unwilling,
both to leave you, Loo, and to leave you
here. But I must go, you know, whether I
like it or not; and I had better go where I can
take with me some advantage of your
influence, than where I should lose it altogether.
Don't you see?"

"Yes, Tom."

The answer was so long in coming, though
there was no indecision in it, that Tom went
and leaned on the back of her chair, to
contemplate the fire which so engrossed her, from
her point of view, and see what he could make
of it.

"Except that it is a fire," said Tom, " it
looks to me as stupid and blank as everything
else looks. What do you see in it? Not a
circus?"

"I don't see anything in it, Tom,
particularly. But since I have been looking at it,
I have been wondering about you and me,
grown up."

"Wondering again!" said Tom.

"I have such unmanageable thoughts,"
returned his sister, "that they will wonder."

"Then I beg of you, Louisa," said Mrs.
Gradgrind, who had opened the door without
being heard, "to do nothing of that description,
for goodness sake you inconsiderate girl,
or I shall never hear the last of it from your
father. And Thomas, it is really shameful,
with my poor head continually wearing me
out, that a boy brought up as you have been,
and whose education has cost what yours has,
should be found encouraging his sister to
wonder, when he knows his father has expressly
said that she is not to do it."

Louisa denied Tom's participation in the
offence; but her mother stopped her with the
conclusive answer, " Louisa, don't tell me, in
my state of health; for unless you had been
encouraged, it is morally and physically
impossible that you could have done it."

"I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by
looking at the red sparks dropping out of the
fire, and whitening and dying. It made me
think, after all, how short my life would be,
and how little I could hope to do in it."

"Nonsense!" said Mrs. Gradgrind, rendered
almost energetic. " Nonsense! Don't stand
there and tell me such stuff, Louisa, to my
face, when you know very well that if it was
ever to reach your father's ears I should never
hear the last of it. After all the trouble that
has been taken with you! After the lectures
you have attended, and the experiments you
have seen! After I have heard you myself, when
the whole of my right side has been benumbed,
going on with your master about combustion,
and calcination, and calorification, and I may
say every kind of ation that could drive a poor
invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this
absurd way about sparks and ashes! I wish,"
whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, taking a chair,
and discharging her strongest point before
succumbing under these mere shadows of facts,
"yes, I really do wish that I had never had
a family, and then you would have known,
what it was to do without me!"

WIRE-DRAWING.

WIRE was not always made by drawing. In
early days metal-workers were wont to beat
out their metal into thin plates or leaves, to
cut the plates into narrow strips, and to round
these strips by a hammer and a file until
they assumed the form of wire. In the
description of the sacerdotal garments
prepared for Aaron, it is stated that the makers
of the ephod, " did beat the gold into thin
plates, and cut it into wires, to work it in the
blue, and in the purple, and in the scarlet,
and in the fine linen, with cunning work."
In the regions of fable, Vulcan is declared to
have forged a net of delicate wirework to
entrap Venus and Mars; and "if that most