nk cheeks and golden curls,
seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase
indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted, much less punished;
though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks,
set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit,
and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory: he called
his mother "old girl," too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin,
similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; not unfrequently tore
and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still "her own darling." I dared
commit no fault: I strove to fulfil every duty; and I was termed naughty
and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to
night.

My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no
one had reproved John for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned
against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with
general opprobrium.

"Unjust!--unjust!" said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into
precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up,
instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable
oppression--as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never
eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.

What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon! How all my
brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection! Yet in what
darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought! I could
not answer the ceaseless inward question--_why_ I thus suffered; now, at
the distance of--I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.

I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had nothing
in harmony with Mrs. Reed or her children, or her chosen vassalage. If
they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them. They were not
bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one
amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in
capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their
interest, or adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the
germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment. I
know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome,
romping child--though equally dependent and friendless--Mrs. Reed would
have endured my presence more complacently; her children wou