‘After all your love!’ he returned, obdurately. ‘Pretty love! Leaving old Bounderby to himself, and packing my best friend Mr. Harthouse off, and going home just when I was in the greatest danger. Pretty love that! Coming out with every word about our having gone to that place, when you saw the net was gathering round me. Pretty love that! You have regularly given me up. You never cared for me.’

‘Tharp’th the word!’ said Sleary, at the door.

They all confusedly went out: Louisa crying to him that she forgave him, and loved him still, and that he would one day be sorry to have left her so, and glad to think of these her last words, far away: when some one ran against them. Mr. Gradgrind and Sissy, who were both before him while his sister yet clung to his shoulder, stopped and recoiled.

For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his thin nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colourless face more colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a white heat, when other people ran themselves into a glow. There he stood, panting and heaving, as if he had never stopped since the night, now long ago, when he had run them down before.

‘I’m sorry to interfere with your plans,’ said Bitzer, shaking his head, ‘but I can’t allow myself to be done by horse-riders. I must have young Mr. Tom; he mustn’t be got away by horse-riders; here he is in a smock frock, and I must have him!’

By the collar, too, it seemed. For, so he took possession of him.