第264页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第264页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
desire for action stirred me. I wished to rise; but what could I put
on? Only my damp and bemired apparel; in which I had slept on the
ground and fallen in the marsh. I felt ashamed to appear before my
benefactors so clad. I was spared the humiliation.
On a chair by the bedside were all my own things, clean and dry. My
black silk frock hung against the wall. The traces of the bog were
removed from it; the creases left by the wet smoothed out: it was
quite decent. My very shoes and stockings were purified and rendered
presentable. There were the means of washing in the room, and a comb
and brush to smooth my hair. After a weary process, and resting
every five minutes, I succeeded in dressing myself. My clothes hung
loose on me; for I was much wasted, but I covered deficiencies with
a shawl, and once more, clean and respectable looking- no speck of the
dirt, no trace of the disorder I so hated, and which seemed so to
degrade me, left- I crept down a stone staircase with the aid of the
banisters, to a narrow low passage, and found my way presently to
the kitchen.
It was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a
generous fire. Hannah was baking. Prejudices, it is well known, are
most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been
loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds
among stones. Hannah had been cold and stiff, indeed, at the first:
latterly she had begun to relent a little; and when she saw me come in
tidy and well-dressed, she even smiled.
'What, you have got up!' she said. 'You are better, then. You may
sit you down in my chair on the hearthstone, if you will.'
She pointed to the rocking-chair: I took it. She bustled about,
examining me every now and then with the corner of her eye. Turning to
me, as she took some loaves from the oven, she asked bluntly-
'Did you ever go a-begging afore you came here?'
I was indignant for a moment; but remembering that anger was out of
the question, and that I had indeed appeared as a beggar to her, I
answered quietly, but still not without a certain marked firmness-
'You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar. I am no beggar; any
more than yourself or your young ladies.'
After a pause she said, 'I dunnut understand that: you've like no
house, nor no brass, I guess?'
'The want of house or brass (by which I suppose you mean money)
does not make a beggar in your sense of the word.'
'Are you book-learned?' she inquired presently.
'Yes, very.'
'But you've never been to a boarding-school?'
'I was at a boarding-school eight years.'
She opened her eyes wide. 'Whatever cannot ye keep yourself for,
then?'
'I have kept myself; and, I trust, shall keep myself again. What
are you going to do with these gooseberries?' I inquired as she
brought out a basket of the fruit.
'Mak' 'em into pies.'
'Give them to me and I'll pick them.'