We saw the carriage stop, and out of it sprang the
active well-knit figure of Mr. George Smith, who was bringing Miss
Bronte to see our father. My father, who had been walking up and
down the room, goes out into the hall to meet his guests, and then,
after a moment's delay, the door opens wide, and the two gentlemen
come in, leading a tiny, delicate, serious, little lady, pale, with
fair straight hair, and steady eyes. She may be a little over
thirty; she is dressed in a little _barege_ dress, with a pattern of
faint green moss. She enters in mittens, in silence, in seriousness;
our hearts are beating with wild excitement. This, then, is the
authoress, the unknown power whose books have set all London talking,
reading, speculating; some people even say our father wrote the
books--the wonderful books. To say that we little girls had been
given _Jane Eyre_ to read scarcely represents the facts of the case;
to say that we had taken it without leave, read bits here and read
bits there, been carried away by an undreamed-of and hitherto
unimagined whirlwind into things, times, places, all utterly
absorbing, and at the same time absolutely unintelligible to us,
would more accurately describe our state of mind on that summer's
evening as we look at Jane Eyre--the great Jane Eyre--the tiny little
lady.
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