Jane Eyre

"Yes, sir."

"Do you read your Bible?"

"Sometimes."

"With pleasure? Are you fond of it?"

"I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel,

and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles,

and Job and Jonah."

"And the Psalms? I hope you like them?"

"No, sir."

"No? oh, shocking! I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows

six Psalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather

have, a gingerbread-nut to eat or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he

says: 'Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms;' says he, 'I

wish to be a little angel here below;' he then gets two nuts in

recompense for his infant piety."

"Psalms are not interesting," I remarked.

"That proves you have a wicked heart; and you must pray to God to

change it: to give you a new and clean one: to take away your

heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

I was about to propound a question, touching the manner in which

that operation of changing my heart was to be performed, when Mrs.

Reed interposed, telling me to sit down; she then proceeded to carry

on the conversation herself.

"Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote

to you three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the

character and disposition I could wish: should you admit her into

Lowood school, I should be glad if the superintendent and teachers

were requested to keep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard

against her worst fault, a tendency to deceit. I mention this in

your hearing, Jane, that you may not attempt to impose on Mr.

Brocklehurst."

Well might I dread, well might I dislike Mrs. Reed; for it was her

nature to wound me cruelly; never was I happy in her presence;

however carefully I obeyed, however strenuously I strove to please

her, my efforts were still repulsed and repaid by such sentences as

the above. Now, uttered before a stranger, the accusation cut me to

the heart; I dimly perceived that she was already obliterating hope

from the new phase of existence which she destined me to enter; I

felt, though I could not have expressed the feeling, that she was

sowing aversion and unkindness along my future path; I saw myself

transformed under Mr. Brocklehurst's eye into an artful, noxious

child, and what could I do to remedy the injury?