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to let her playthings alone (for the tiny chairs and mirrors, the
fairy plates and cups, were her property) stopped my proceedings;
and then, for lack of other occupation, I fell to breathing on the
frost-flowers with which the window was fretted, and thus clearing
a space in the glass through which I might look out on the grounds,
where all was still and petrified under the influence of a hard
frost.

From this window were visible the porter's lodge and the carriage-
road, and just as I had dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage
veiling the panes as left room to look out, I saw the gates thrown
open and a carriage roll through. I watched it ascending the drive
with indifference; carriages often came to Gateshead, but none ever
brought visitors in whom I was interested; it stopped in front of
the house, the door-bell rang loudly, the new-comer was admitted.
All this being nothing to me, my vacant attention soon found livelier
attraction in the spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and
chirruped on the twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against
the wall near the casement. The remains of my breakfast of bread
and milk stood on the table, and having crumbled a morsel of roll,
I was tugging at the sash to put out the crumbs on the window-
sill, when Bessie came running upstairs into the nursery.

"Miss Jane, take off your pinafore; what are you doing there? Have
you washed your hands and face this morning?" I gave another tug
before I answered, for I wanted the bird to be secure of its bread:
the sash yielded; I scattered the crumbs, some on the stone sill,
some on the cherry-tree bough, then, closing the window, I replied -

"No, Bessie; I have only just finished dusting."

"Troublesome, careless child! and what are you doing now? You
look quite red, as if you had 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

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