CHAPTER III 29
" No ; I should not like to belong to poor people ," was my reply .
" Not even if they were kind to you ?"
I shook my head : I could not see how poor people had the means of being kind ; and then to learn to speak like them , to adopt their manners , to be uneducated , to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the village of Gateshead : no , I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste .
" But are your relatives so very poor ? Are they working people ?"
" I cannot tell ; Aunt . Reed says if I have any , they must be a beggarly set : I should not like to go a begging ."
" Would you like to go to school ?"
Again I reflected : I scarcely knew what school was : Bessie sometimes spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks , wore backboards , and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and precise : John Reed hated his school , and abused his master ; but John Reed ' s tastes were no rule for mine , and if Bessie ' s accounts of school-discipline ( gathered from the young ladies of a family where she had lived before coming to Gateshead ) were somewhat appalling , her details of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies were , I thought , equally attractive . She boasted of beautiful paintings of landscapes and flowers by them executed ; of songs they could sing and pieces they could play , of purses they could net , of French books they could translate ; till my spirit was moved to emulation as I listened . Besides , school would be a complete change : it implied a long journey , an entire separation from Gateshead , an entrance into a new life .
" I should indeed like to go to school ," was the audible conclusion of my musings .