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which brought me first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since.
My vacations had all been spent at school: Mrs. Reed had never
sent for me to Gateshead; neither she nor any of her family had ever
been to visit me. I had had no communication by letter or message
with the outer world: school-rules, school-duties, school-habits
and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and
preferences, and antipathies -- such was what I knew of existence.
And now I felt that it was not enough; I tired of the routine of
eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I
gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the
wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler
supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept
off into vague space: "Then," I cried, half desperate, "grant me
at least a new servitude!"

Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs.

I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections
till bedtime: even then a teacher who occupied the same room
with me kept me from the subject to which I longed to recur, by a
prolonged effusion of small talk. How I wished sleep would silence
her. It seemed as if, could I but go back to the idea which
had last entered my mind as I stood at the window, some inventive
suggestion would rise for my relief.

Miss Gryce snored at last; she was a heavy Welshwoman, and till
now her habitual nasal strains had never been regarded by me in any
other light than as a nuisance; to-night I hailed the first deep
notes with satisfaction; I was debarrassed of interruption; my
half-effaced thought instantly revived.

"A new servitude! There is something in that," I soliloquised
(mentally, be it understood; I did not talk aloud), "I know there
is, because it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words
as Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but
no more than sounds for me; and so hollow and fleeting that it is
mere waste of time to listen to them. But Servitude! That must
be matter of fact. Any one may serve: I have served here eight
years; now all I want is to serve elsewhere. Can I not get so much
of my own will? Is not the thing feasible? Yes -- yes -- the end
is not so difficult; if I had only a brain active enough to ferret
out the means of attaining it."

I sat up in bed by way of arousing this said brain: it was a chilly
night; I covered my shoulders with a shawl, and then I proceeded
TO THINK again with all my might.

"What do I want? A new place, in a new house, amongst new faces,
under new circumstances: I want this because it is of no use wanting
anything better. How do people do to get a new place? They apply
to friends, I suppose: I have no friends. There are many others
who have no friends, who must look about for themselves and be
their own helpers; and what is their resource?"

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