‘I have the father’s address. Perhaps you would not mind walking to town with me?’

‘Not the least in the world,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘as long as you do it at once!’

So, Mr. 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