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 her head in at the door, and said at once -

"She is in the window-seat, to be sure, Jack."