What is the central irony in the passage? a. mr. bounderby recounts a childhood of poverty, but he is actually very rich. b. mrs. gradgrind wants to show sympathy, but ends up making fun of mr. bounderby. c. mr. bounderby pretends to be humble, but he is in fact boastful and full of himself. d. mrs. gradgrind shows great sympathy, but she cannot tolerate the presence of mr. bounderby. hard times by charles dickens (excerpt) [mr. bounderby] was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. a big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. a man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him. a man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and lift his eyebrows up. a man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. a man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. a man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. a man who was the bully of humility. a year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, mr. bounderby looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising anybody. he had not much hair. one might have fancied he had talked it off; and that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness. . 'i hadn't a shoe to my foot. as to a stocking, i didn't know such a thing by name. i passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a pigsty. that's the way i spent my tenth birthday. not that a ditch was new to me, for i was born in a ditch.' mrs. gradgrind, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking physic without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on her; mrs. gradgrind hoped it was a dry ditch? 'no! as wet as a sop. a foot of water in it,' said mr. bounderby. 'enough to give a baby cold,' mrs. gradgrind considered. 'cold? i was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of everything else, i believe, that was capable of inflammation,' returned mr. bounderby. 'for years, ma'am, i was one of the most miserable little wretches ever seen. i was so sickly, that i was always moaning and groaning. i was so ragged and dirty, that you wouldn't have touched me with a pair of tongs.