"Hard Times" by Charles Dickens

Mr. Gradgrind is a man of facts and calculations. At the start he identifies a student named number twenty. The student is called Sissy Jupe. But Gradgrind finds this unacceptable and corrects her, saying that she is Cecilia and it doesn’t matter how her father calls her.
Mr. Bounderby is Mr. Gradgrind’s closest friend. He considers himself: ‘’A man with pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, ready to start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man.’’(page 14) And he always rambled about how he grew up in wretched conditions. After a talk with Mr. Bounderby they agree the Sissy should be removed from the school, so that she does not infect other students with imaginative thoughts. However when Mr. Gradgrind wanted to do it, he found out that she just got abandoned by her father, so in the end she joins the Gradgrind domain and continues to go to the school. …