They had been taught to
think, to analyse, to reject, to appreciate. Charlotte Bronte was happy
in the choice made for her of the second school to which she was sent.
There was a robust freedom in the out-of-doors life of her companions.
They played at merry games in the fields round the house: on Saturday
half-holidays they went long scrambling walks down mysterious shady
lanes, then climbing the uplands, and thus gaining extensive views over
the country, about which so much had to be told, both of its past and
present history.
Miss W--- must have had in great perfection the French art, "conter," to
judge from her pupil's recollections of the tales she related during
these long walks, of this old house, or that new mill, and of the states
of society consequent on the changes involved by the suggestive dates of
either building. She remembered the times when watchers or wakeners in
the night heard the distant word of command, and the measured tramp of
thousands of sad desperate men receiving a surreptitious military
training, in preparation for some great day which they saw in their
visions, when right should struggle with might and come off victorious:
when the people of England, represented by the workers of Yorkshire,
Lancashire, and Nottinghamshire, should make their voice heard in a
terrible slogan, since their true and pitiful complaints could find no
hearing in parliament.
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