Another new drug

"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 can bake!

Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.  Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed's pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature.  I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking; fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of sombre indignation.  I took a book--some Arabian tales; I sat down and endeavoured to read.  I could make no sense of the subject; my own thoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found fascinating.  I opened the glass-door in the breakfast-room: the shrubbery was quite still: the black frost reigned, unbroken by sun or breeze, through the grounds.  I covered my head and arms with the skirt of my frock, and went out to walk in a part of the plantation which was quite sequestrated; but I found no pleasure in the silent trees, the falling fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past winds in heaps, and now stiffened together.  I leaned against a gate, and looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding, where the short grass was nipped and blanched.  It was a very grey day; a most opaque sky, "onding on snaw," canopied all; thence flakes felt it intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without melting.  I stood, a wretched child enough, whispering to myself over and over again, "What shall I do?--what shall I do?"  All at once I heard a clear voice call, "Miss Jane! where are you?  Come to lunch!"  It was Bessie, I knew well enough; but I did not stir; her light step came tripping down the path.  "You naughty little thing!" she said.  "Why don't you come when you are called?"  Bessie's presence, compared with the thoughts over which I had been brooding, seemed cheerful; even though, as usual, she was somewhat cross. The fact is, after my conflict with and victory over Mrs. Reed, I was not disposed to care much for the nursemaid's transitory anger; and I _was_ disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of heart.  I just put my two arms round her and said, "Come, Bessie! don't scold."  The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated to indulge in: somehow it pleased her.  "You are a strange child, Miss Jane," she said, as she looked down at me; "a little roving, solitary thing: and you are going to school, I suppose?"