Free Jane Slayre by Sherri Browning Erwin Page B

Two girls near me groaned, seemingly as moved by the sight of the stoic, bleeding Burns as I was, only they stared after her with a queer look, as if hunger, in their eyes. Curious, that.
    I forgot them and paused from my sewing because my fingers quivered at the spectacle of Burns's beating with impotent anger, but not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression.
    "Hardened girl!" exclaimed Miss Scatcherd. "Nothing can correct you of your slatternly habits. Carry the rod away!"
    Burns obeyed. I observed as she emerged from the book closet. She was just putting her handkerchief back into her pocket, but the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek. I couldn't imagine how the injustice escaped the notice of most of the girls. A few in Burns's group, such as the two girls near me, stared after her with seeming fascination. The rest seemed blind to the entire scene, or at least they ignored it. I could not ignore it. I intended to speak to Burns again as soon as I could manage.
    The evening play-hour I thought the pleasantest fraction of the day at Lowood: the bit of bread and the draught of coffee swallowed at five o'clock had revived vitality, if it had not satisfied hunger. I looked for Burns as I wandered as usual amongst the forms and tables and laughing groups without a companion, yet not feeling lonely.
    I passed the windows, occasionally lifting a blind to look out on the snow. A drift was already forming against the lower panes. Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would have been the hour when I would most keenly have regretted the separation. I'd packed my doll, along with some stakes, but I did not dare pull her out in company, lest anyone see me. I did not notice any of the girls to have childlike possessions from home. The doll would stay in my pack, guarding the stakes, which might yet come in handy. I thought of Miss Scatcherd.
    I derived a strange excitement from thinking of the stakes that I tried to attribute to the wildness of the wind instead. Doubtless the weather made me reckless and feverish. I wished the wind to
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    howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to rise to a clamour.
    Jumping over forms and creeping under tables, I made my way to one of the fireplaces. There, kneeling by the high wire fender, I found Burns absorbed, silent, abstracted from all round her by the companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers.
    "Is it still Rasselas ?" I asked, coming behind her.
    "Yes, and I have just finished it." She closed the cover.
    I sat down by her on the floor. "What is your name besides Burns?"
    "Helen."
    "I'm Jane. Jane Slayre. Do you come a long way from here?"
    "I come from a place farther north, quite on the borders of Scotland."
    "You must wish to leave Lowood." I certainly wouldn't wish to stay if I were beaten and abused like Helen Burns and I had anywhere else to go.
    "No! Why should I? I was sent to Lowood to get an education, and it would be of no use going away until I have attained that object."
    "But that wicked Miss Scatcherd! How do you bear it?"
    "Wicked? Not at all! She is severe. She dislikes my faults."
    "Severe? She might as well be a vampyre." I paused in case Helen showed any reaction to my statement. No glimmer of recognition. I went on, "And if I were in your place, I should dislike her. I should resist her. If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand and--" Dear reader, I stopped myself before I said I should stab it through her heart. "I should break it under her nose."
    "Probably you would do nothing of the sort. But if you did, Mr. Bokorhurst would expel you from the school. That would be a great grief to your relations. Besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil."
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    I wondered that anyone could be so good as Helen Burns truly seemed. I felt that she considered things by a light invisible to my eyes. If vampyres lived and reveled on earth, why, then,