Page:Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey (1st edition), Volume 3 (Agnes Grey).djvu/79

Rh young people were at meals and find them spilling their milk over the table and themselves, plunging their fingers into their own, or each others' mugs, or quarrelling over their victuals like a set of tiger's cubs. If I were quiet at the moment, I was conniving at their disorderly conduct, if, (as was frequently the case,) I happened to be exalting my voice to enforce order, I was using undue violence, and setting the girls a bad example by such ungentleness of tone and language.

I remember one afternoon in Spring, when, owing to the rain, they could not go out; but, by some amazing good fortune, they had all finished their lessons, and yet abstained from running down to tease their parents—a trick that annoyed me greatly, but which, on rainy days, I seldom could prevent their doing; because, below, they found novelty and amusement—especially when visiters were in the house, and their mother, though she bid me keep them in the school-room, would never chide them for leaving it, or trouble herself to send them back; but to-day they appeared satisfied with their present abode, and what is more wonderful still, seemed disposed to play together without depending on me for