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"Well,
nurse, how is she?"

Bessie answered that I was doing very well.

"Then she ought to look more cheerful. Come here, Miss Jane: your
name is Jane, is it not?"

"Yes, sir, Jane Eyre."

"Well, you have been crying, Miss Jane Eyre; can you tell me what
about? Have you any pain?"

"No, sir."

"Oh! I daresay she is crying because she could not go out with
Missis in the carriage," interposed Bessie.

"Surely not! why, she is too old for such pettishness."

I thought so too; and my self-esteem being wounded by the false
charge, I answered promptly, "I never cried for such a thing in
my life: I hate going out in the carriage. I cry because I am
miserable."

"Oh fie, Miss!" said Bessie.

The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled. I was standing
before him; he fixed his eyes on me very steadily: his eyes were
small and grey; not very bright, but I dare say I should think them
shrewd now: he had a hard-featured yet good-natured looking
face. Having considered me at leisure, he said -

"What made you ill yesterday?"

"She had a fall," said Bessie, again putting in her word.

"Fall! why, that is like a baby again! Can't she manage to walk
at her age? She must be eight or nine years old."

"I was knocked down," was the blunt explanation, jerked out of me
by another pang of mortified pride; "but that did not make me ill,"
I added; while Mr. Lloyd helped himself to a pinch of snuff.

As he was returning the box to his waistcoat pocket, a loud bell rang
for the servants' dinner; he knew what it was. "That's for you,
nurse," said he; "you can go down; I'll give Miss Jane a lecture
till you come back."

Bessie would rather have stayed, but she was obliged to go, because
punctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall.

"The fall did not make you ill; what did, then?" pursued Mr. Lloyd
when Bessie was gone.

"I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark."

I saw Mr. Lloyd smile and frown at the same time.

"Ghost! What, you are a baby after all! You are afraid of ghosts?"

"Of Mr. Reed's ghost I am: he died in that room, and was laid out
there. Neither Bessie nor any one else will go into it at night,
if they can help it; and it was cruel to shut me up alone without
a candle, -- so cruel that I think I shall never forget it."

"Nonsense! And is it that makes you so miserable? Are you afraid
now in daylight?"

"No: but night will come again before long: and besides, -- I am
unhappy, -- very unhappy, for other things."

"What other things? Can you tell me some of them?"

How much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult
it was to frame any answer! Children can feel, but they cannot
analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected
in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process
in words. Fearful, however, of losing this first and only opportunity

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