It was impossible to take a walk that day. Since dinner the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was out of the question. Instead, we had to amuse ourselves indoors[1]. I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons. My cousins, Eliza, John and Georgiana Reed were sitting round their mama in the drawing-room by the fire-side, but I was not allowed to join the group.
“You, Jane, are excluded from our company until I hear from Bessie that you can behave like a proper, sweet little girl,” announced Mrs. Reed.
“What does Bessie say I have done?” I asked.
“Jane, I don’t like questioners; don’t answer me back[2]. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”
I went into another room, with a bookcase in it. I took one of the books, Bewick’s History of British Birds, and climbed into the window seat. I drew the curtain, gathered up my feet, and sat cross-legged, like a Turk. Then I immersed myself into another world. I was now discovering the shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with ‘the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and that reservoir of frost and snow. Of these death white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children’s brains, but strangely impressive.
The book contained pictures, and each picture told a story. These stories were as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings when she was in good humour and fed our attention with passages of love and adventure from old fairy tales and other ballads.
With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way. I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon. The breakfast-room door opened.
“Boh!” cried the voice of John Reed. Then he paused as he thought the room was empty. “Where is she? Lizzy! Georgy! Tell Mama! Jane’s run out into the rain!”
“She’s in the window seat,” Eliza said at once.
I came out immediately before John could drag me out.
“What do you want?” I asked.
John Reed was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy, four years older than I. He was large and stout for his age, and he bullied me continually. I hated and feared him, I could do nothing against his menaces. The servants did not like to offend their young master, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject.
