"For one thing, I have no father or mother, brothers or sisters."
"You have a kind aunt and cousins."
Again I paused; then bunglingly enounced —
"But John Reed knocked me down, and my aunt shut me up in the red-room."
Mr. Lloyd a second time produced his snuff-box.
"Don't you think Gateshead Hall a very beautiful house?" asked he. "Are you not very thankful to have such a fine place to live at?"
"It is not my house, sir; and Abbot says I have less right to be here than a servant."
"Pooh! you can't be silly enough to wish to leave such a splendid place?"
"If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it; but I can never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman."
"Perhaps you may — who knows? Have you any relations besides Mrs. Reed?"
"I think not, sir."
"None belonging to your father?"
"I don't know. I asked Aunt Reed once, and she said possibly I might have some poor, low relations called Eyre, but she knew nothing about them."
"If you had such, would you like to go to them?"
I reflected. Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable poverty; they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty for me was synonymous with degradation.
