CHAPTER XI 123
When Mrs . Fairfax had bidden me a kind good-night , and I had fastened my door , gazed leisurely round , and in some measure effaced the eerie impression made by that wide hall , that dark and spacious staircase , and that long , cold gallery , by the livelier aspect of my little room , I remembered that , after a day of bodily fatigue and mental anxiety , I was now at last in safe haven . The impulse of gratitude swelled my heart , and I knelt down at the bedside , and offered up thanks where thanks were due ; not forgetting , ere I rose , to implore aid on my further path , and the power of meriting the kindness which seemed so frankly offered me before it was earned . My couch had no thorns in it that night ; my solitary room no fears . At once weary and content , I slept soon and soundly : when I awoke it was broad day .
The chamber looked such a bright little place to me as the sun shone in between the gay blue chintz window curtains , showing papered walls and a carpeted floor , so unlike the bare planks and stained plaster of Lowood , that my spirits rose at the view . Externals have a great effect on the young : I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me , one that was to have its flowers and pleasures , as well as its thorns and toils . My faculties , roused by the change of scene , the new field offered to hope , seemed all astir . I cannot precisely define what they expected , but it was something pleasant : not perhaps that day or that month , but at an indefinite future period .
I rose ; I dressed myself with care : obliged to be plain -- for I had no article of attire that was not made with extreme simplicity -- I was still by nature solicitous to be neat . It was not my habit to be disregardful of appearance or careless of the impression I made : on the contrary , I ever wished to look as well as I could , and to please as much as my want of beauty would permit . I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer ; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks , a straight nose , and small cherry mouth ; I desired to be tall , stately , and finely developed in figure ; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little , so pale , and had features so irregular and so marked . And why had I these aspirations and these regrets ? It would be difficult to say : I could not then distinctly say it to myself ; yet I had a reason , and a logical , natural reason too . However , when I had brushed my hair very smooth , and put on