When her tender feet had carried her a mile along the road, she came to a spot where overhanging trees made the highway dark and gloomy; she imagined that she had come to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and, fearing to go forward, was presently discovered by her nurse cowering by the road side. T. WEMYSS REID: ‘Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Charlotte at fifteen.] [Sidenote: First impressions of a school-mate.] I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old-fashioned clothes, and looking very cold and miserable. She was coming to school at Miss Wooler’s. When she appeared in the school-room, her dress was changed, but just as old. She looked a little old woman, so short-sighted that she always appeared to be seeking something, and moving her head from side to side to catch a sight of it. She was very shy and nervous, and spoke with a strong Irish accent. When a book was given her, she dropped her head over it till her nose nearly touched, and when she was told to hold her head up, up went the book after it, still close to her nose, so that it was not possible to help laughing. ---- ----: _Communication_, quoted by MRS. GASKELL. * * * * * I can well imagine that the grave, serious composure, which, when I knew her, gave her face the dignity of an old Venetian portrait, was no acquisition of later years, but dated from that early age when she found herself in the position of an elder sister to motherless children. But in a girl only just entered on her teens, such an expression would be called, (to use a country phrase) “old-fashioned;” and in 1831 ... we must think of her as a little, set, antiquated girl, very quiet in manners, and very quaint in dress; for, besides the influence exerted by her father’s ideas concerning the simplicity of attire befitting the daughters of a country clergyman, her aunt, on whom the duty of dressing her nieces principally devolved, had never been in society since she left Penzance, eight or nine years before, and the Penzance fashions of that day were still dear to her heart. MRS. GASKELL: ‘Life of Charlotte Brontë.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Miss Nussey’s account of Charlotte at this period.] [Sidenote: Combined ignorance and precocity.]