"What?" said Mrs. Reed under her breath: her usually cold composed grey
eye became troubled with a look like fear; she took her hand from my arm,
and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether I were child or
fiend. I was now in for it.
"My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so can
papa and mama: they know how you shut me up all day long, and how you
wish me dead."
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Mrs. Reed soon rallied her spirits: she shook me most soundly, she boxed
both my ears, and then left me without a word. Bessie supplied the
hiatus by a homily of an hour's length, in which she proved beyond a
doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a
roof. I half believed her; for I felt indeed only bad feelings surging
in my breast.
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