第20页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第20页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
'Troublesome, careless child! and what are you doing now? You
look quite red, as if you have been about some mischief: what were you
opening the window for?'
I was spared the trouble of answering, for Bessie seemed in too
great a hurry to listen to explanations; she hauled me to the
washstand, inflicted a merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face
and hands with soap, water, 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