Alone

Jumping over forms, and creeping under tables, I made my way to one of the fire-places; there, kneeling by the high wire fender, I found Burns, absorbed, silent, abstracted from all round her by the companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers.  "Is it still 'Rasselas'?" I asked, coming behind her.  "Yes," she said, "and I have just finished it."  And in five minutes more she shut it up.  I was glad of this.  "Now," thought I, "I can perhaps get her to talk."  I sat down by her on the floor.  "What is your name besides Burns?"  "Helen."  "Do you come a long way from here?"  "I come from a place farther north, quite on the borders of Scotland."  "Will you ever go back?"  "I hope so; but nobody can be sure of the future."  "You must wish to leave Lowood?"  "No! why should I?  I was sent to Lowood to get an education; and it would be of no use going away until I have attained that object."  "But that teacher, Miss Scatcherd, is so cruel to you?"  "Cruel?  Not at all!  She is severe: she dislikes my faults."  "And if I were in your place I should dislike her; I should resist her. If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her nose."  "Probably you would do nothing of the sort: but if you did, Mr. Brocklehurst would expel you from the school; that would be a great grief to your relations.  It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil."  "But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged, and to be sent to stand in the middle of a room full of people; and you are such a great girl: I am far younger than you, and I could not bear it."  "Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you _cannot bear_ what it is your fate to be required to bear."