A great eagerness to open the door of life to the boy, who had been her
pupil and who she thought might pos- sess a talent for the understanding of life, had pos- session of her.
He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck, and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burs; one eye had lost its
pupil, and was glaring and spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it.
Grose herself for, the pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at supper with four tall candles and with my
pupil, in a high chair and a bib, brightly facing me, between them, over bread and milk.
The young lady teachers "showed off" -- bending sweetly over
pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting pretty warning fingers at bad little boys and patting good ones lovingly.
I may then depend upon this child being received as a
pupil at Lowood, and there being trained in conformity to her position and prospects?
She had studied the natures of her two
pupils in the daily intimacy of twelve years.
The afternoon was spent at lawn tennis, to which lady guests resident in the neighborhood were allowed to bring their husbands, brothers, and fathers--Miss Wilson being anxious to send her
pupils forth into the world free from the uncouth stiffness of schoolgirls unaccustomed to society.
The first professor I saw, was in a very large room, with forty
pupils about him.
His hands were clenched, and the
pupils of his eyes were like disks of blue fire.
His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed
pupils.
He was so deeply impressed by the progress made by these
pupils, and by the pathos of their dumbness, that when he arrived in Canada he was in doubt as to which of these two tasks was the more important--the teaching of deaf-mutes or the invention of a musical telegraph.
Influenced by the impression I had received of his gentleness, I was a good deal surprised when, on arriving the next day at my new employer's house, and being admitted to a first view of what was to be the sphere of my future labours, namely the large, lofty, and well lighted schoolrooms, I beheld a numerous assemblage of
pupils, boys of course, whose collective appearance showed all the signs of a full, flourishing, and well-disciplined seminary.
