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 matter with them.  She made herself ready, and drove with him in his gig.  When she entered the schoolroom, she saw from twelve to fifteen girls lying about; some resting their aching heads on the table, others on the ground; all heavy-eyed, flushed, indifferent, and weary, with pains in every limb.  Some peculiar odour, she says, made her recognise that they were sickening for “the fever;” and she told Mr. Wilson so, and that she could not stay there for fear of conveying the infection to her own children; but he half commanded, and half entreated her to remain and nurse them; and finally mounted his gig and drove away, while she was still urging that she must return to her own house, and to her domestic duties, for which she had provided no substitute.  However, when she was left in this unceremonious manner, she determined to make the best of it; and a most efficient nurse she proved:  although, as she says, it was a dreary time.

Mr. Wilson supplied everything ordered by the doctors, of the best quality and in the most liberal manner; the invalids were attended by Dr. Batty, a very clever surgeon in Kirby, who had had the medical superintendence of the establishment from the beginning, and who afterwards became Mr. Wilson’s brother-in-law.  I have heard from two witnesses besides Charlotte Bronte, that Dr. Batty condemned the preparation of the food by the expressive action of spitting out a portion of it.  He himself, it is but fair to say, does not remember this circumstance, nor does he speak of the fever itself as either alarming or dangerous.  About forty of the girls suffered from this, but none of them died at Cowan Bridge; though one died at her own home, sinking under the state of health which followed it.  None of the Brontes had the fever.  But the same causes, which affected the health of the other pupils through typhus, told more slowly, but not less surely, upon their constitutions.  The principal of these causes was the food.