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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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29 and a coarse towel; disciplined my head with a bristly brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying me to the top of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted in the breakfast-room. I would have asked who wanted me: I would have demanded if Mrs. Reed was there; but Bessie was already gone, and had closed the nursery-door upon me. I slowly descended. For nearly three months, I had never been called to Mrs. Reed’s presence; restricted so long to the nursery, the breakfast, dining, and drawing-rooms were become for me awful regions, on which it dismayed me to intrude. I now stood in the empty hall; before me was the breakfast-room door, and I stopped, intimidated and trembling. What a miserable little poltroon had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those days! I feared to return to the nursery, and feared to go forward to the parlour; ten minutes I stood in agitated hesitation; the vehement ringing of the breakfast- room bell decided me; I must enter. ‘Who could want me?’ I asked inwardly, as with both hands I turned the stiff door-handle, which, for a second or two, resisted my efforts. ‘What should I see besides Aunt Reed in the apartment?- a man or a woman?’ The handle turned, the door unclosed, and passing through and curtseying low, I looked up at- a black pillar!- such, at least, appeared to me, at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug: the grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital. Mrs. Reed occupied her usual seat by the fireside; she made a signal to me to approach; I did so, and she introduced me to the stony stranger with the words: ‘This is the little girl respecting whom I applied to you.’ He, for it was a man, turned his head slowly towards where I stood, and having examined me with the two inquisitive-looking grey eyes which twinkled under a pair of bushy brows, said solemnly, and in a bass voice, ‘Her size is small: what is her age?’ ‘Ten years.’ ‘So much?’ was the doubtful answer; and he prolonged his scrutiny for some minutes. Presently he addressed me‘Your name, little girl?’ ‘Jane Eyre, sir.’ In uttering these words I looked up: he seemed to me a tall gentleman; but then I was very little; his features were large, and they and all the lines of his frame were equally harsh and prim. ‘Well, Jane Eyre, and are you a good child?’ Impossible to reply to this in the affirmative: my little world held a contrary opinion: I was silent. Mrs. Reed answered for me by an expressive shake of the head, adding soon, ‘Perhaps the less said on that subject the |
