Chapter 6 - Page 2

Before Mr Bounderby could reply, a young man appeared at the door, and introducing himself with the words, ‘By your leaves, gentlemen!’ walked in with his hands in his pockets. His face, close-shaven, thin, and sallow, was shaded by a great quantity of dark hair, brushed into a roll all round his head, and parted up the centre. His legs were very robust, but shorter than legs of good proportions should have been. His chest and back were as much too broad, as his legs were too short. He was dressed in a Newmarket coat and tight-fitting trousers; wore a shawl round his neck; smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange-peel, horses’ provender, and sawdust; and looked a most remarkable sort of Centaur, compounded of the stable and the play-house. Where the one began, and the other ended, nobody could have told with any precision. This gentleman was mentioned in the bills of the day as Mr E. W. B. Childers, so justly celebrated for his daring vaulting act as the Wild Huntsman of the North American Prairies; in which popular performance, a diminutive boy with an old face, who now accompanied him, assisted as his infant son: being carried upside down over his father’s shoulder, by one foot, and held by the crown of his head, heels upwards, in the palm of his father’s hand, according to the violent paternal manner in which wild huntsmen may be observed to fondle their offspring. Made up with curls, wreaths, wings, white bismuth, and carmine, this hopeful young person soared into so pleasing a Cupid as to constitute the chief delight of the maternal part of the spectators; but in private, where his characteristics were a precocious cutaway coat and an extremely gruff voice, he became of the Turf, turfy.

‘By your leaves, gentlemen,’ said Mr E. W. B. Childers, glancing round the room. ‘It was you, I believe, that were wishing to see Jupe!’

‘It was,’ said Mr Gradgrind. ‘His daughter has gone to fetch him, but I can’t wait; therefore, if you please, I will leave a message for him with you.’

‘You see, my friend,’ Mr Bounderby put in, ‘we are the kind of people who know the value of time, and you are the kind of people who don’t know the value of time.’

‘I have not,’ retorted Mr Childers, after surveying him from head to foot, ‘the honour of knowing you, — but if you mean that you can make more money of your time than I can of mine, I should judge from your appearance, that you are about right.’

‘And when you have made it, you can keep it too, I should think,’ said Cupid.

‘Kidderminster, stow that!’ said Mr Childers. (Master Kidderminster was Cupid’s mortal name.)

‘What does he come here cheeking us for, then?’ cried Master Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament.