Free Villette by Charlotte Brontë Page A

weather. Here is a picture of thousands gathered in a desolate place—a plain, spread with sand—round a man in black,—a good, good Englishman,—a missionary, who is preaching to them under a palm-tree.’ (She showed a little coloured cut to that effect.) ‘And here are pictures’ (she went on) ‘more stranger’ (grammar was occasionally forgotten) ’than that. There is the wonderful Great Wall of China; here is a Chinese lady, with a foot littler than mine. There is a wild horse of Tartary; and here—most strange of all—is a land of ice and snow, without green fields, woods, or gardens. In this land, they found some mammoth bones: there are no mammoths now. You don’t know what it was; but I can tell you, because Graham told me. A mighty, goblin creature, as high as this room, and as long as the hall; but not a fierce, flesh-eating thing, Graham thinks. He believes, if I met one in a forest, it would not kill me, unless I came quite in its way; when it would trample me down amongst the bushes, as I might tread on a grasshopper in a hay-field without knowing it.’
    Thus she rambled on.
    ‘Polly,’ I interrupted, ‘should you like to travel?’
    ‘Not just yet,’ was the prudent answer; ‘but perhaps in twenty years, when I am grown a woman, as tall as Mrs. Bretton, I may travel with Graham. We intend going to Switzerland, and climbing Mount Blanck; and some day we shall sail over to South America, and walk to the top of Kim—kim—borazo.’
    ‘But how would you like to travel now, if your papa was with you?’
    Her reply—not given till after a pause—evinced one of those unexpected turns of temper peculiar to her:—
    ‘Where is the good of talking in that silly way?’ said she. ‘Why do you mention papa? What is papa to you? I was just beginning to be happy, and not think about him so much; and there it will be all to do over again!’
    Her lip trembled. I hastened to disclose the fact of a letter having been received, and to mention the directions given that she and Harriet should immediately rejoin their dear papa. ‘Now Polly, are you not glad?’ I added.
    She made no answer. She dropped her book, and ceased to rock her doll; she gazed at me with gravity and earnestness.
    ‘Shall you not like to go to papa?’
    ‘Of course,’ she said at last in that trenchant manner she usually employed in speaking to me; and which was quite different from that she used with Mrs. Bretton, and different again from the one dedicated to Graham. I wished to ascertain more of what she thought; but no: she would converse no more. Hastening to Mrs. Bretton, she questioned her, and received the confirmation of my news. The weight and importance of these tidings kept her perfectly serious the whole day. In the evening, at the moment Graham’s entrance was heard below, I found her at my side. She began to arrange a locket-ribbon about my neck, she displaced and replaced the comb in my hair; while thus busied, Graham entered.
    ‘Tell him by and-by,’ she whispered; ‘tell him I am going.’
    In the course of tea-time I made the desired communication. Graham, it chanced, was at that time greatly preoccupied about some school-prize, for which he was competing. The news had to be told twice before it took proper hold of his attention; and even then he dwelt on it but momently.
    ‘Polly going? What a pity! Dear little Mousie, I shall be sorry to lose her: she must come to us again, mama.’
    And hastily swallowing his tea, he took a candle and a small table to himself and his books, and was soon buried in study.
    ‘Little Mousie’ crept to his side, and lay down on the carpet at his feet, her face to the floor; mute and motionless she kept that post and position till bed-time. Once I saw Graham—wholly unconscious of her proximity—push her with his restless foot. She receded an inch or two. A minute after one little hand stole out from beneath her face, to which it had been pressed, and softly caressed the