d never learnt grammar at all,
and very little geography."

This account of her partial ignorance is confirmed by her other school-
fellows. But Miss W--- was a lady of remarkable intelligence and of
delicate tender sympathy. She gave a proof of this in her first
treatment of Charlotte. The little girl was well-read, but not
well-grounded. Miss W--- took her aside and told her she was afraid that
she must place her in the second class for some time till she could
overtake the girls of her own age in the knowledge of grammar, &c.; but
poor Charlotte received this announcement with so sad a fit of crying,
that Miss W---'s kind heart was softened, and she wisely perceived that,
with such a girl, it would be better to place her in the first class, and
allow her to make up by private study in those branches where she was
deficient.

"She would confound us by knowing things that were out of our range
altogether. She was acquainted with most of the short pieces of poetry
that we had to learn by heart; would tell us the authors, the poems they
were taken from, and sometimes repeat a page or two, and tell us the
plot. She had a habit of writing in italics (printing characters), and
said she had learnt it by writing in their magazine. They brought out a
'magazine' once a month, and wished it to look as like print as possible.
She told us a tale out of it. No one wrote in it, and no one read it,
but herself, her brother, and two sisters. She promised to show me some
of these magazines, but retracted it afterwards, and would never be
persuaded to do so. In our play hours she sate, or stood still, with a
book, if possible. Some of us once urged her to be on our side in a game
at ball. She said she had never played, and could not play. We made her
try, but soon found that she could not see the ball, so we put her out.
She took all our proceedings with pliable indifference, and always seemed
to need a previous resolution to say 'No' to anything. She used to go
and stand under the trees in the play-ground, and say it was pleasanter.
She endeavoured to explain this, pointing out the shadows, the peeps of
sky, &c. We understood but little of it. She said that at Cowan Bridge
she used to stand in the burn, on a stone, to watch the water flow by. I
told her she should have gone fishing; she said she never wanted. She
always showed physical feebleness in everything. She ate no animal food
at school. It was about this ti