she went on, Mrs. Sparsit went on. She went
by the way Mrs. Sparsit had come, emerged
from the green lane, crossed the stony road,
and ascended the wooden steps to the railroad.
A train for Coketown would come
through presently, Mrs. Sparsit knew; so, she
understood Coketown to be her first place of
destination.

In Mrs. Sparsit's limp and streaming state,
no extensive precautions were necessary to
change her usual appearance; but, she stopped
under the lee of the station wall, tumbled her
shawl into a new shape, and put it on over
her bonnet. So disguised, she had no fear of
being recognised when she followed up the
railroad steps, and paid her money in the
small office. Louisa sat waiting in a corner.
Mrs. Sparsit sat waiting in another corner.
Both listened to the thunder, which was loud,
and to the rain, as it washed off the roof, and
pattered on the parapets of the arches. Two
or three lamps were rained and blown out;
so, both saw the lightning to advantage as it
quivered and zig-zaged on the iron tracks.

The seizure of the station with a fit of
trembling, gradually deepening to a complaint
of the heart, announced the train. Fire and
steam, and smoke, and red light; a hiss, a
crash, a bell, and a shriek; Louisa put into
one carriage, Mrs. Sparsit put into another;
the little station a desert speck in the
thunder-storm.

Though her teeth chattered in her head
from wet and cold, Mrs. Sparsit exulted
hugely. The figure had plunged down the
precipice, and she felt herself, as it were,
attending on the body. Could she, who had
been so active in the getting up of the funeral
triumph, do less than exult? "She will be
at Coketown long before him," thought Mrs.
Sparsit, "though his horse is never so good.
Where will she wait for him? And where
will they go together? Patience. We shall
see."

The tremendous rain occasioned infinite
confusion, when the train stopped at its
destination. Gutters and pipes had burst, drains
had overflowed, and streets were under water.
In the first instant of alighting, Mrs. Sparsit
turned her distracted eyes towards the waiting
coaches, which were in great request.
"She will get into one," she considered, "and
will be away before I can follow in another.
At all risks of being run over, must see the
number, and hear the order given to the
coachman."

But, Mrs. Sparsit was wrong in her calculation.
Louisa got into no coach, and was
already gone. The black eyes kept upon the
railroad-carriage in which she had travelled,
settled upon it a moment too late. The door
not being opened after several minutes, Mrs.
Sparsit passed it and repassed it, saw nothing,
looked in, and found it empty. Wet through
and through; with her feet squelching and
squashing in her shoes whenever she moved;
with a rash of rain upon her classical visage;
with a bonnet like an over-ripe fig; with all
her clothes spoiled; with damp impressions
of every button, string, and hook-and-eye she
wore, printed off upon her highly-connected
back; with a stagnant verdure on her general
exterior, such as accumulates on an old park
fence in a mouldy lane; Mrs. Sparsit had no
resource but to burst into tears of bitterness
and say, "I have lost her!"

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE national dustmen, after entertaining
one another with a great many noisy little
fights among themselves, had dispersed for
the present, and Mr. Gradgrind was at home
for the vacation.

He sat writing in the room with the deadly-
statistical clock, proving something no doubt
—probably, in the main, that the Good
Samaritan was a Bad Economist. The noise of the
rain did not disturb him much; but it
attracted his attention sufficiently to make him
raise his head sometimes, as if he were rather
remonstrating with the elements. When it
thundered very loudly, he glanced towards
Coketown, having it in his mind that some of
the tall chimneys might be struck by lightning.

The thunder was rolling into distance,
and the rain was pouring down like a deluge,
when the door of his room opened. He looked
round the lamp upon his table, and saw with
amazement, his eldest daughter.

"Louisa!"

"Father, I want to speak to you."

"What is the matter? How strange you
look! And good Heaven," said Mr.
Gradgrind, wondering more and more, "have you
come here exposed to this storm?"

She put her hands to her dress, as if she
hardly knew. "Yes." Then she uncovered
her head, and letting her cloak and hood fall
where they might, stood looking at him: so
colorless, so dishevelled, so defiant and
despairing, that he was afraid of her.

"What is it? I conjure you, Louisa, tell
me what is the matter."

She dropped into a chair before him, and
put her cold hand on his arm.

"Father, you have trained me from my
cradle."

"Yes, Louisa."

"I curse the hour in which I was born to
such a destiny."

He looked at her in doubt and dread,
vacantly repeating, "Curse the hour? Curse
the hour?"

"How could you give me life, and take
from me all the inappreciable things that
raise it from the state of conscious death?
Where are the graces of my soul? Where
are the sentiments of my heart? What have
you done, O father what have you done, with
the garden that should have bloomed once, in
this great wilderness here!"

She struck herself with both her hands
upon her bosom.

"If it had ever been here, its ashes alone