The Arabian Nights Entertainments were sternly refused her; so she read them by stealth; and from that day there was always a collection of books, borrowed from friends, or filched from the upper shelf in the library, beneath her mattress.  Nobody thought of looking there for them; and even if they had, they might have paused to reflect on the consequences of betraying her.  Her eldest sister having given her a small workbox on her eleventh birthday, had the present thrown at her head two days later for reporting to her parents that Nelly’s fondness for sitting in a certain secluded summer-house was due to her desire to read Lord Byron’s poetry unobserved.  Miss Lydia’s forehead was severely cut; and Elinor, though bitterly remorseful, not only refused to beg pardon for her fault, but shattered every brittle article in the room to which she was confined for her contumacy.  The vicar, on being consulted, recommended that she should be well whipped.  This counsel was repugnant to Hardy McQuinch, but he gave his wife leave to use her discretion in the matter.  The mother thought that the child ought to be beaten into submission; but she was afraid to undertake the task, and only uttered a threat, which was received with stubborn defiance.  This was forgotten next day when Elinor, exhausted by a week of remorse, terror, rage, and suspense, became dangerously ill.  When she recovered, her parents were more indulgent to her, and were gratified by finding her former passionate resistance replaced by sulky obedience.  Five years elapsed, and Elinor began to write fiction.  The beginning of a novel, and many incoherent verses imitated from Lara, were discovered by her mother, and burnt by her father.  This outrage she never forgave.  She was unable to make her resentment felt, for she no longer cared to break glass and china.  She feared even to remonstrate lest she should humiliate herself by bursting into tears, as, since her illness, she had been prone to do in the least agitation.  So she kept silence, and ceased to speak to either of her parents except when they addressed questions to her.  Her father would neither complain of this nor confess the regret he felt for his hasty destruction of her manuscripts; but, whilst he proclaimed that he would burn every scrap of her nonsense that might come into his hands, he took care to be blind when he surprised her with suspicious bundles of foolscap, and snubbed his wife for hinting that Elinor was secretly disobeying him.  Meanwhile her silent resentment never softened, and the life of the family was embittered by their consciousness of it.  It never occurred to Mrs. McQuinch, an excellent mother to her two eldest daughters, that she was no more fit to have charge of the youngest than a turtle is to rear a young eagle.  The discomfort of their relations never shook her faith in their “naturalness.”  Like her husband and the vicar, she believed that when God sent children he made their parents fit to rule them.  And Elinor resented her parents’ tyranny, as she felt it to be, without dreaming of making any allowances for their being in a false position towards her.