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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com Digital Library-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte


67

On reaching the bedroom, we heard the voice of Miss Scatcherd:
she was examining drawers; she had just pulled out Helen Burns’s,
and when we entered Helen was greeted with a sharp reprimand,
and told that to-morrow she should have half a dozen of untidily
folded articles pinned to her shoulder.

‘My things were indeed in shameful disorder,’ murmured Helen to
me, in a low voice: ‘I intended to have arranged them, but I forgot.’
Next morning, Miss Scatcherd wrote in conspicuous characters on
a piece of pasteboard the word ‘Slattern,’ and bound it like a
phylactery round Helen’s large, mild, intelligent, and benign-
looking forehead. She wore it till evening, patient, unresentful,
regarding it as a deserved punishment. The moment Miss
Scatcherd withdrew after afternoon school, I ran to Helen, tore it
off, and thrust it into the fire: the fury of which she was incapable
had been burning in my soul all day, and tears, hot and large, had
continually been scalding my cheek; for the spectacle of her sad
resignation gave me an intolerable pain at the heart.

About a week subsequently to the incidents above narrated, Miss
Temple, who had written to Mr. Lloyd, received his answer: it
appeared that what he said went to corroborate my account. Miss
Temple, having assembled the whole school, announced that
inquiry had been made into the charges alleged against Jane Eyre,
and that she was most happy to be able to pronounce her
completely cleared from every imputation. The teachers then shook
hands with me and kissed me, and a murmur of pleasure ran
through the ranks of my companions.

Thus relieved of a grievous load, I from that hour set to work
afresh, resolved to pioneer my way through every difficulty: I
toiled hard, and my success was proportionate to my efforts; my
memory, not naturally tenacious, improved with practice; exercise
sharpened my wits; in a few weeks I was promoted to a higher
class; in less than two months I was allowed to commence French
and drawing. I learned the first two tenses of the verb Etre, and
sketched my first cottage (whose walls, by the bye, outrivalled in
slope those of the leaning tower of Pisa), on the same day. That
night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the
Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new
milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings: I
feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings, which I saw in
the dark; all the work of my own hands: freely pencilled houses
and trees, picturesque rocks and ruins, Cuyp-like groups of cattle,
sweet paintings of butterflies hovering over unblown roses, of
birds picking at ripe cherries, of wrens’ nests enclosing pearl-like
eggs, wreathed about with young ivy sprays. I examined, too, in
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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com Digital Library-Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte



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