Her indefatigable craving for knowledge tempted Miss W--- on into setting her longer and longer tasks of reading for examination; and towards the end of the year and a half that she remained as a pupil at Roe Head, she received her first bad mark for an imperfect lesson. She had had a great quantity of Blair's "Lectures on Belles Lettres" to read; and she could not answer some of the questions upon it; Charlotte Bronte had a bad mark. Miss W--- was sorry, and regretted that she had set Charlotte so long a task. Charlotte cried bitterly. But her school-fellows were more than sorry--they were indignant. They declared that the infliction of ever so slight a punishment on Charlotte Bronte was unjust--for who had tried to do her duty like her?--and testified their feeling in a variety of ways, until Miss W---, who was in reality only too willing to pass over her good pupil's first fault, withdrew the bad mark; and the girls all returned to their allegiance except "Mary," who took her own way during the week or two that remained of the half-year, choosing to consider that Miss W---, in giving Charlotte Bronte so long a task, had forfeited her claim to obedience of the school regulations. The number of pupils was so small that the attendance to certain subjects at particular hours, common in larger schools, was not rigidly enforced. When the girls were ready with their lessons, they came to Miss W--- to say them. She had a remarkable knack of making them feel interested in whatever they had to learn. They set to their studies, not as to tasks or duties to be got through, but with a healthy desire and thirst for knowledge, of which she had managed to make them perceive the relishing savour. They did not leave off reading and learning as soon as the compulsory pressure of school was taken away. They had been taught to think, to analyse, to reject, to appreciate. Charlotte Bronte was happy in the choice made for her of the second school to which she was sent. There was a robust freedom in the out-of-doors life of her companions. They played at merry games in the fields round the house: on Saturday half-holidays they went long scrambling walks down mysterious shady lanes, then climbing the uplands, and thus gaining extensive views over the country, about which so much had to be told, both of its past and present history.