tongue in his cheek whenever he saw
me, and once attempted chastisement; but as I instantly turned against
him, roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt which
had stirred my corruption before, he thought it better to desist, and ran
from me tittering execrations, and vowing I had burst his nose. I had
indeed levelled at that prominent feature as hard a blow as my knuckles
could inflict; and when I saw that either that or my look daunted him, I
had the greatest inclination to follow up my advantage to purpose; but he
was already with his mama. I heard him in a blubbering tone commence the
tale of how "that nasty Jane Eyre" had flown at him like a mad cat: he
was stopped rather harshly--

"Don't talk to me about her, John: I told you not to go near her; she is
not worthy of notice; I do not choose that either you or your sisters
should associate with her."

Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, and without at all
deliberating on my words--

"They are not fit to associate with me."

Mrs. Reed was rather a stout woman; but, on hearing this strange and
audacious declaration, she ran nimbly up the stair, swept me like a
whirlwind into the nursery, and crushing me down on the edge of my crib,
dared me in an emphatic voice to rise from that place, or utter one
syllable during the remainder of the day.

"What would Uncle Reed say to you, if he were alive?" was my scarcely
voluntary demand. I say scarcely voluntary, for it seemed as if my
tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance:
something spoke out of me over which I had no control.

"What?" said Mrs. Reed under her breath: her usually cold composed grey
eye became troubled with a look like fear; she took her hand from my arm,
and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether I were child or
fiend. I was now in for it.

"My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so can
papa and mama: they know how you shut me up all day long, and how you
wish me dead."

Mrs. Reed soon rallied her spirits: she shook me most soundly, she boxed
both my ears, and then left me without a word. Bessie supplied the
hiatus by a homily of an hour's length, in which she proved beyond a
doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a
roof. I half believed her; for I felt indeed only bad feelings surging
in my breast.

November, December, and half of January passed away.