Джейн Эйр / Jane Eyre

�But are your relatives so very poor? Are they working people?’

�I cannot tell; Aunt Reed says if I have any, they must be a beggarly set: I should not like to go a-begging.’

�Would you like to go to school?’

Again I reflected: I scarcely knew what school was; Bessie sometimes spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks, wore backboards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and precise: John Reed hated his school, and abused his master; but John Reed’s tastes were no rule for mine, and if Bessie’s accounts of school-discipline (gathered from the young ladies of a family where she had lived before coming to Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, her details of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies were, I thought, equally attractive.

She boasted of beautiful paintings of landscapes and flowers by them executed; of songs they could sing and pieces they could play, of purses they could net, of French books they could translate; till my spirit was moved to emulation as I listened. Besides, school would be a complete change, it implied a long journey, an entire separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life.

�I should indeed like to go to school,’ was the audible conclusion of my musings.

�Well, well! who knows what may happen?’ said Mr. Lloyd, as he got up. �The child ought to have change of air and scene,’ he added, speaking to himself; �nerves not in a good state.

’

Bessie now returned; at the same moment the carriage was heard rolling up the gravel-walk.

�Is that your mistress, nurse?’ asked Mr. Lloyd. �I should like to speak to her before I go.’

Bessie invited him to walk into the breakfast-room, and led the way out. In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Reed, I presume, from after-occurrences, that the apothecary ventured to recommend my being sent to school; and the recommendation was no doubt readily enough adopted; for as Abbot said, in discussing the subject with Bessie when both sat sewing in the nursery one night, after I was in bed, and, as they thought, asleep, �Missis was, she dared say, glad enough to get rid of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child, who always looked as if she were watching everybody, and scheming plots underhand.

’ Abbot, I think, gave me credit for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes.