Page:Daddy-Long-Legs.djvu/163

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DADDY-LONG-LEGS

ciation gave a dinner in the gymnasium to all of the winners. We had fried soft-shell crabs, and chocolate ice-cream moulded in the shape of basket balls.

I sat up half of last night reading "Jane Eyre." Are you old enough, Daddy, to remember sixty years ago? And, if so, did people talk that way?

The haughty Lady Blanche says to the footman, "Stop your chattering, knave, and do my bidding." Mr. Rochester talks about the metal welkin when he means the sky; and as for the mad woman who laughs like a hyena and sets fire to bed curtains and tears up wedding veils and bites—it's melodrama of the purest, but just the same, you read and read and read. I can't see how any girl could have written such a book, especially any girl who was brought up in a churchyard. There's something about those Brontés that fascinates me. Their books, their lives, their spirit. Where did they get it? When I was reading about

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