_i.e._ Charlotte, Anne, and I, shall be all merrily seated in our own
sitting-room in some pleasant and flourishing seminary, having just
gathered in for the midsummer holiday. Our debts will be paid off and we
shall have cash in hand to a considerable amount. Papa, Aunt, and
Branwell, will either have been or be coming to visit us."

And Anne writes with equal innocence (it is delicious, Anne's diary):
"Four years ago I was at school. Since then I have been a governess at
Blake Hall, left it, come to Thorp Green, and seen the sea and York
Minster."... "We have got Keeper, got a sweet little cat and lost it,
and also got a hawk. Got a wild goose which has flown away, and three
tame ones, one of which has been killed."

It is Emily who lets out the dreary secret of the dream--the debts which
could not be paid; probably Branwell's.

But the "considerable amount of cash in hand" was to remain a dream.
Nothing came of Branwell's knight-errantry. He muddled the accounts of
the Leeds and Manchester Railroad and was sent home. It was not good for
Branwell to be a clerk at a lonely wayside station. His disaster, which
they much exaggerated, was a shock to the three sisters. They began to
have misgivings, premonitions of Branwell's destiny.

And from Mrs. White's at Rawdon, Charlotte sends out cry after desolate
cry. Again we have an impression of an age of exile, but really the
exile did not last long, not much longer than Emily's imprisonment in
the Academy for Young Ladies, nothing like so long as Anne's miserable
term.

The exile really began in 'forty-two, when Charlotte and Emily left