, and
that a spread of shot orange and purple silk pelisses and a cloud of
silvery plumage extended and waved below me.

Mr. Brocklehurst hemmed.

"Ladies," said he, turning to his family, "Miss Temple, teachers, and
children, you all see this girl?"

Of course they did; for I felt their eyes directed like burning-glasses
against my scorched skin.

"You see she is yet young; you observe she possesses the ordinary form of
childhood; God has graciously given her the shape that He has given to
all of us; no signal deformity points her out as a marked character. Who
would think that the Evil One had already found a servant and agent in
her? Yet such, I grieve to say, is the case."

A pause--in which I began to steady the palsy of my nerves, and to feel
that the Rubicon was passed; and that the trial, no longer to be shirked,
must be firmly sustained.

"My dear children," pursued the black marble clergyman, with pathos,
"this is a sad, a melancholy occasion; for it becomes my duty to warn
you, that this girl, who might be one of God's own lambs, is a little
castaway: not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper and
an alien. You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her
example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports,
and shut her out from your converse. Teachers, you must watch her: keep
your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinise her actions,
punish her body to save her soul: if, indeed, such salvation be possible,
for (my tongue falters while I tell it) this girl, this child, the native
of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its
prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut--this girl is--a liar!"

Now came a pause of ten minutes, during which I, by this time in perfect
possession of my wits, observed all the female Brocklehursts produce
their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics, while the
elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the two younger ones
whispered, "How shocking!" Mr. Brocklehurst resumed.

"This I learned from her benefactress; from the pious and charitable lady
who adopted her in her orphan state, reared her as her own daughter, and
whose kindness, whose generosity the unhappy girl repaid by an
ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that at last her excellent patroness was
obliged to separate her from her own young ones, fearful lest her vicious
example should contaminate their purity: she h