The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him, I passed over quickly: it was an object of terror.So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows.Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting:
As interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed's lace frills, and crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland.
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! Madam Mope!' cried the voice of John Reed; then he paused: he found the room apparently empty.
'Where the dickens is she!' he continued. 'Lizzy! Georgy! (calling to his sisters) Joan is not here: tell mama she is run out into the rain—bad animal!'
'It is well I drew the curtain,' thought I; and I wished fervently he might not discover my hiding-place: nor would John Reed have found it out himself; he was not quick either of vision or conception; but Eliza just put her head in at the door, and said at once—'She is in the window-seat, to be sure, Jack.And I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Jack.
'What do you want?' I asked, with awkward diffidence.
'Say, 'What do you want, Master Reed?'' was the answer. 'I want you to come here;' and seating himself in an arm chair, he intimated by a gesture that I was to approach and
stand before him.John Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his
age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities.
He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks. He ought now to have been at school; but his mama had taken him home for a month or two, 'on account of his delicate health.'
Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home; but the mother's heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that John's sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining after home.
John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an antipathy to me. He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near.
There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like to offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Reed was blind and deaf on the subject:
she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though he did both now and then in her very presence, more frequently, however, behind her back.Habitually obedient to John, I came up to his chair: he spent some three minutes inthrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without damaging the roots: I knew he would soon strike, and while dreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently deal it.
I wonder if he read that notion in my face; for, all at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and strongly. I tottered, and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair. 'That is for your
impudence in answering mama awhile since,' said he, 'and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for the look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!'
Accustomed to John Reed's abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it; my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult.'What were you doing behind the curtain?' he asked.
'I was reading.Show the book.'I returned to the window and fetched it thence."You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen's children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama's expense. Now, I'll teach you to rummage my bookshelves: for they ARE mine; all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years. Go and stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows."