of the evening.
"Do you like London, Miss Bronte?" she said; another silence, a
pause, then Miss Bronte answers, "Yes and No," very gravely. Mrs.
Brookfield has herself reported the conversation. My sister and I
were much too young to be bored in those days; alarmed, impressed we
might be, but not yet bored. A party was a party, a lioness was a
lioness; and--shall I confess it?--at that time an extra dish of
biscuits was enough to mark the evening. We felt all the importance
of the occasion: tea spread in the dining-room, ladies in the
drawing-room. We roamed about inconveniently, no doubt, and
excitedly, and in one of my incursions crossing the hall, after Miss
Bronte had left, I was surprised to see my father opening the front
door with his hat on. He put his fingers to his lips, walked out
into the darkness, and shut the door quietly behind him. When I went
back to the drawing-room again, the ladies asked me where he was. I
vaguely answered that I thought he was coming back. I was puzzled at
the time, nor was it all made clear to me till long years afterwards,
when one day Mrs. Procter asked me if I knew what had happened once
when my father had invited a party to meet Jane Eyre at his house.
It was one of the dullest evenings she had ever spent in her life,
she said. And then with a good deal of humour she described the
situation--the ladies who had all come expecting so much delightful
conversation, and the gloom and the constraint, and how, finally,
overwhelmed by the situation, my father had quietly left the room,
left the house, and gone off to his club. The ladies waited,
wondered, and finally departed also; and as we were going up to bed
with our candles after everybody was gone, I remember two pretty Miss
L---s, in shiny silk dresses, arriving, full of expectation. . . . We
still said we thought our father would soon be back, but the Miss
L---s declined to wait upon the chance, laughed, and drove away again
almost immediately.' {423}

TO REV. P. BRONTE

'_May_ 28_th_, 1851.

'DEAR PAPA,--I must write another line to you to tell you how I am
getting on. I have seen a great many things since I left home about
which I hope to talk to you at future tea-times at home. I have been
to