he, as he entered the nursery. “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 anyone 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 analyze their
feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they
know not how to express the result of the process in 

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