第265页
《简·爱(英文版)》章节:第265页,宠文网网友提供全文无弹窗免费在线阅读。!
'Nay; I dunnut want ye to do nought.'
'But I must do something. Let me have them.'
She consented; and she even brought me a clean towel to spread over
my dress, 'lest,' as she said, 'I should mucky it.'
'Ye've not been used to sarvant's wark, I see by your hands,' she
remarked. 'Happen ye've been a dressmaker?'
'No, you are wrong. And now, never mind what I have been: don't
trouble your head further about me; but tell me the name of the
house where we are.'
'Some calls it Marsh End, and some calls it Moor House.'
'And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr. St. John?'
'Nay; he doesn't live here: he is only staying a while. When he
is at home, he is in his own parish at Morton.'
'That village a few miles off?'
'Aye.'
'And what is he?'
'He is a parson.'
I remembered the answer of the old housekeeper at the parsonage,
when I had asked to see the clergyman. 'This, then, was his father's
residence?'
'Aye; old Mr. Rivers lived here, and his father, and grandfather,
and gurt (great) grandfather afore him.'
'The name, then, of that gentleman, is Mr. St. John Rivers?'
'Aye; St. John is like his kirstened name.'
'And his sisters are called Diana and Mary Rivers?'
'Yes.'
'Their father is dead?'
'Dead three weeks sin' of a stroke.'
'They have no mother?'
'The mistress has been dead this mony a year.'
'Have you lived with the family long?'
'I've lived here thirty year. I nursed them all three'
'That proves you must have been an honest and faithful servant. I
will say so much for you, though you have had the incivility to call
me a beggar.'
She again regarded me with a surprised stare. 'I believe,' she
said, 'I was quite mista'en in my thoughts of you: but there is so
mony cheats goes about, you mun forgie me.'
'And though,' I continued, rather severely, 'you wished to turn
me from the door, on a night when you should not have shut out a dog.'
'Well, it was hard: but what can a body do? I thought more o' th'
childer nor of mysel: poor things! They've like nobody to tak' care on
'em but me. I'm like to look sharpish.'
I maintained a grave silence for some minutes.
'You munnut think too hardly of me,' she again remarked.
'But I do think hardly of you,' I said; 'and I'll tell you why- not
so much because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an
impostor, as because you just now made it a species of reproach that I
had no "brass" and no house. Some of the best people that ever lived
have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you
ought not to consider poverty a crime.'
'No more I ought,' said she: 'Mr. St. John tells me so too; and I
see I wor wrang- but I've clear a different notion on you now to
what I had. You look a raight down dacent little crater.'
'That will do- I forgive you now. Shake hands.'
She put her floury and horny hand into mine; another and heartier