From this window were visible the porter’s lodge and the carriage-road, and just as I had dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage veiling the panes as left room to look out, I saw the gates thrown open and a carriage roll through.  I watched it ascending the drive with indifference; carriages often came to Gateshead, but none ever brought visitors in whom I was interested; it stopped in front of the house, the door-bell rang loudly, the new-comer was admitted.  All this being nothing to me, my vacant attention soon found livelier attraction in the spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and chirruped on the twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the casement.  The remains of my breakfast of bread and milk stood on the table, and having crumbled a morsel of roll, I was tugging at the sash to put out the crumbs on the window-sill, when Bessie came running upstairs into the nursery.

“Miss Jane, take off your pinafore; what are you doing there?  Have you washed your hands and face this morning?” I gave another tug before I answered, for I wanted the bird to be secure of its bread:  the sash yielded; I scattered the crumbs, some on the stone sill, some on the cherry-tree bough, then, closing the window, I replied —

“No, Bessie; I have only just finished dusting.”

“Troublesome, careless child! and what are you doing now?  You look quite red, as if you had been about some mischief:  what were you opening the window for?”

I was spared the trouble of answering, for Bessie seemed in too great a hurry to listen to explanations; she hauled me to the washstand, inflicted a merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face and hands with soap, water, and a coarse towel; disciplined my head with a bristly brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying me to the top of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted in the breakfast-room.

I would have asked who wanted me:  I would have demanded if Mrs. Reed was there; but Bessie was already gone, and had closed the nursery-door upon me.  I slowly descended.  For nearly three months, I had never been called to Mrs. Reed’s presence; restricted so long to the nursery, the breakfast, dining, and drawing-rooms were become for me awful regions, on which it dismayed me to intrude.

I now stood in the empty hall; before me was the breakfast-room door, and I stopped, intimidated and trembling.  What a miserable little poltroon had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those days!  I feared to return to the nursery, and feared to go forward to the parlour; ten minutes I stood in agitated hesitation; the vehement ringing of the breakfast-room bell decided me; I must enter.

“Who could want me?” I asked inwardly, as with both hands I turned the stiff door-handle, which, for a second or two, resisted my efforts.  “What should I see besides Aunt Reed in the apartment? —­ a man or a woman?” The handle turned, the door unclosed, and passing through and curtseying low, I looked up at —­ a black pillar! —­ such, at least, appeared to me, at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug:  the grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital.