Long did the hours seem while I waited the departure of the company,
and listened for the sound of Bessie's step on the stairs:
sometimes she would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or
her scissors, or perhaps to bring me something by way of supper--a
bun or a cheese-cake--then she would sit on the bed while I ate it,
and when I had finished, she would tuck the clothes round me, and
twice she kissed me, and said, "Good night, Miss Jane." When thus
gentle, Bessie seemed to me the best, prettiest, kindest being in
the world; and I wished most intensely that she would always be so
pleasant and amiable, and never push me about, or scold, or task me
unreasonably, as she was too often wont to do. Bessie Lee must, I
think, have been a girl of good natural capacity, for she was smart
in all she did, and had a remarkable knack of narrative; so, at
least, I judge from the impression made on me by her nursery tales.
She was pretty too, if my recollections of her face and person are
correct. I remember her as a slim young woman, with black hair,
dark eyes, very nice features, and good, clear complexion; but she
had a capricious and hasty temper, and indifferent ideas of
principle or justice: still, such as she was, I preferred her to
any one else at Gateshead Hall.
It was the fifteenth of January, about nine o'clock in the morning:
Bessie was gone down to breakfast; my cousins had not yet been
summoned to their mama; Eliza was putting on her bonnet and warm
garden-coat to go and feed her poultry, an occupation of which she
was fond: and not less so of selling the eggs to the housekeeper
and hoarding up the money she thus obtained. She had a turn for
traffic, and a marked propensity for saving; shown not only in the
vending of eggs and chickens, but also in driving hard bargains with
the gardener about flower-roots, seeds, and slips of plants; that
functionary having orders from Mrs. Reed to buy of his young lady
all the products of her parterre she wished to sell: and Eliza
would have sold the hair off her head if she could have made a
handsome profit thereby. As to her money, she first secreted it in
odd corners, wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper; but some of
these hoards having been discovered by the housemaid, Eliza, fearful
of one day losing her valued treasure, consented to intrust it to
her mother, at a usurious rate of interest--fifty or sixty per
cent.; which interest she exacted every quarter, keeping her
accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy.