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Classes were broken up, rules relaxed. The
few who continued well were allowed almost unlimited license;
because the medical attendant insisted on the necessity of frequent
exercise to keep them in health: and had it been otherwise, no
one had leisure to watch or restrain them. Miss Temple's whole
attention was absorbed by the patients: she lived in the sick-room,
never quitting it except to snatch a few hours' rest at night.
The teachers were fully occupied with packing up and making other
necessary preparations for the departure of those girls who were
fortunate enough to have friends and relations able and willing
to remove them from the seat of contagion. Many, already smitten,
went home only to die: some died at the school, and were buried
quietly and quickly, the nature of the malady forbidding delay.

While disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood, and death
its frequent visitor; while there was gloom and fear within its
walls; while its rooms and passages steamed with hospital smells,
the drug and the pastille striving vainly to overcome the effluvia
of mortality, that bright May shone unclouded over the bold hills
and beautiful woodland out of doors. Its garden, too, glowed
with flowers: hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees, lilies had
opened, tulips and roses were in bloom; the borders of the little
beds were gay with pink thrift and crimson double daisies; the
sweetbriars gave out, morning and evening, their scent of spice and
apples; and these fragrant treasures were all useless for most of
the inmates of Lowood, except to furnish now and then a handful of
herbs and blossoms to put in a coffin.

But I, and the rest who continued well, enjoyed fully the beauties
of the scene and season; they let us ramble in the wood, like
gipsies, from morning till night; we did what we liked, went where
we liked: we lived better too. Mr. Brocklehurst and his family
never came near Lowood now: household matters were not scrutinised
into; the cross housekeeper was gone, driven away by the fear
of infection; her successor, who had been matron at the Lowton
Dispensary, unused to the ways of her new abode, provided with
comparative liberality. Besides, there were fewer to feed; the
sick could eat little; our breakfast-basins were better filled;
when there was no time to prepare a regular dinner, which often
happened, she would give us a large piece of cold pie, or a thick
slice of bread and cheese, and this we carried away with us to
the wood, where we each chose the spot we liked best, and dined
sumptuously.

My favourite seat was a smooth and broad stone, rising white and dry
from the very middle of the beck, and only to be got at by wading
through the water; a feat I accomplished barefoot. The stone was
just broad enough to accommodate, comfortably, another girl and me,
at that time my chosen comrade -- one Mary Ann Wilson; a shrewd,

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