And Anne, as naïve as a little nun, writes in _her_ sealed paper: "Emily is upstairs ironing. I am sitting in the dining-room in the rocking-chair before the fire with my feet on the fender. Papa is in the parlour. Tabby and Martha are, I think, in the kitchen. Keeper and Flossy are, I do not know where. Little Dick is hopping in his cage." And then, "Emily ... is writing some poetry.... I wonder what it is about?" That is the only clue to the secret that is given. These childlike diaries are full of the "Gondal Chronicles",[A] an interminable fantasy in which for years Emily collaborated with Anne. They flourished the "Gondal Chronicles" in each other's faces, with positive bravado, trying to see which could keep it up the longer. Under it all there was a mystery; for, as Charlotte said of their old play, "Best plays were secret plays," and the sisters kept their best hidden. And then suddenly the "Gondal Chronicles" were dropped, the mystery broke down. All three of them had been writing poems; they had been writing poems for years. Some of Emily's dated from her first exile at Roe Head. Most of Anne's sad songs were sung in her house of bondage. From Charlotte, in her Brussels period, not a line. [Footnote A: See _supra_, pp. 193 to 209.] But at Haworth, in the years that followed her return and found her free, she wrote nearly all her maturer poems (none of them were excessively mature): she wrote _The Professor_, and close upon _The Professor_, _Jane Eyre_. In the same term that found her also, poor child, free, and at Haworth, Anne wrote _Agnes Grey_ and _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_. And Emily wrote _Wuthering Heights_. They had found their destiny--at Haworth. * * * * * Every conceivable theory has been offered to account for the novels that came so swiftly and incredibly from these three sisters. It has been said that they wrote them merely to pay their debts when they found that poems did not pay. It would be truer to say that they wrote them because it was their destiny to write them, and because their hour had come, and that they published them with the dimmest hope of a return. Before they knew where they were, Charlotte found herself involved in what she thought was a businesslike and masculine correspondence with publishing firms. The _Poems_ by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, appeared first, and nothing happened. _The Professor_ travelled among publishers, and nothing happened. Then, towards the end of the fourth year there came _Jane Eyre_, and Charlotte was famous.