CHAPTER I 9
I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard , with its inscribed headstone ; its gate , its two trees , its low horizon , girdled by a broken wall , and its newly-risen crescent , attesting the hour of eventide .
The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea , I believed to be marine phantoms .
The fiend pinning down the thief ' s pack behind him , I passed over quickly : it was an object of terror .
So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock , surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows .
Each picture told a story ; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings , yet ever profoundly interesting : as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings , when she chanced to be in good humour ; and when , having brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth , she allowed us to sit about it , and while she got up Mrs . Reed ' s lace frills , and crimped her nightcap borders , fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads ; or ( as at a later period I discovered ) from the pages of Pamela , and Henry , Earl of Moreland .
With Bewick on my knee , I was then happy : happy at least in my way . I feared nothing but interruption , and that came too soon . The breakfast-room door opened .
" Boh ! Madam Mope !" cried the voice of John Reed ; then he paused : he found the room apparently empty .
" Where the dickens is she !" he continued . " Lizzy ! Georgy ! ( calling to his sisters ) Joan is not here : tell mama she is run out into the rain -- bad animal !"
" It is well I drew the curtain ," thought I ; and I wished fervently he might not discover my hiding-place : nor would John Reed have found it out himself ; he was not quick either of vision or conception ; but Eliza just put