ood
nearest to the door of this room. One morning, after she had become so
seriously unwell as to have had a blister applied to her side (the sore
from which was not perfectly healed), when the getting-up bell was heard,
poor Maria moaned out that she was so ill, so very ill, she wished she
might stop in bed; and some of the girls urged her to do so, and said
they would explain it all to Miss Temple, the superintendent. But Miss
Scatcherd was close at hand, and her anger would have to be faced before
Miss Temple's kind thoughtfulness could interfere; so the sick child
began to dress, shivering with cold, as, without leaving her bed, she
slowly put on her black worsted stockings over her thin white legs (my
informant spoke as if she saw it yet, and her whole face flushed out
undying indignation). Just then Miss Scatcherd issued from her room,
and, without asking for a word of explanation from the sick and
frightened girl, she took her by the arm, on the side to which the
blister had been applied, and by one vigorous movement whirled her out
into the middle of the floor, abusing her all the time for dirty and
untidy habits. There she left her. My informant says, Maria hardly
spoke, except to beg some of the more indignant girls to be calm; but, in
slow, trembling movements, with many a pause, she went down-stairs at
last,--and was punished for being late.

Any one may fancy how such an event as this would rankle in Charlotte's
mind. I only wonder that she did not remonstrate against her father's
decision to send her and Emily back to Cowan Bridge, after Maria's and
Elizabeth's deaths. But frequently children are unconscious of the
effect which some of their simple revelations would have in altering the
opinions entertained by their friends of the persons placed around them.
Besides, Charlotte's earnest vigorous mind saw, at an unusually early
age, the immense importance of education, as furnishing her with tools
which she had the strength and the will to wield, and she would be aware
that the Cowan Bridge education was, in many points, the best that her
father could provide for her.

Before Maria Bronte's death, that low fever broke out, in the spring of
1825, which is spoken of in "Jane Eyre." Mr. Wilson was extremely
alarmed at the first symptoms of this. He went to a kind motherly woman,
who had had some connection with the school--as laundress, I believe--and
asked her to come and tell him what was the matte