Jane Eyre

Diana,« said one of the absorbed students; »Franz and old Daniel are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream from which he has awakened in terror – listen!« And in a low voice she read something, of which not one word was intelligible to me; for it was in an unknown tongue – neither French nor Latin. Whether it were Greek or German I could not tell.
    »That is strong,« she said, when she had finished: »I relish it.« The other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated, while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read. At a later day, I knew the language and the book; therefore I will here quote the line: though when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on sounding brass to me – conveying no meaning: –
    »›Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.‹ Good! good!« she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled. »There you have a dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you! The line is worth a hundred pages of fustian. ›Ich wäge die Gedanken in der Schale meines Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.‹ I like it!«
    Both were again silent.
    »Is there ony country where they talk i' that way?« asked the old woman, looking up from her knitting.
    »Yes, Hannah – a far larger country than England; where they talk in no other way.«
    »Well, for sure case, I knawn't how they can understand t' one t' other: and if either o' ye went there, ye could tell what they said, I guess?«
    »We could probably tell something of what they said, but not all – for we are not as clever as you think us, Hannah. We don't speak German, and we cannot read it without a dictionary to help us.«
    »And what good does it do you?«
    »We mean to teach it some time – or at least the elements, as they say; and then we shall get more money than we do now.«
    »Varry like: but give ower studying: ye've done enough for to-night.«
    »I think we have: at least I'm tired. Mary, are you?«
    »Mortally: after all, it's tough work fagging away at a language with no master but a lexicon.«
    »It is: especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious Deutsch. I wonder when St John will come home.«
    »Surely he will not be long now: it is just ten« (looking at a little gold watch she drew from her girdle). »It rains fast. Hannah, will you have the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?«
    The woman rose: she opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage: soon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room; she presently came back.
    »Ah, childer!« said she, »it fair troubles me to go into yond' room now: it looks so lonesome wi' the chair empty and set back in a corner.«
    She wiped her eyes with her apron: the two girls, grave before, looked sad now.
    »But he is in a better place,« continued Hannah: »we shouldn't wish him here again. And then, nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had.«
    »You say he never mentioned us?« inquired one of the ladies.
    »He hadn't time, bairn: he was gone in a minute – was your father. He had been a bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify; and when Mr. St John asked if he would like either o' ye to be sent for, he fair laughed at him. He began again with a bit of a heaviness in his head the next day – that is, a fortnight sin' – and he went to sleep and niver wakened: he wor a'most stark when your brother went into t' chamber and fand him. Ah, childer! that's t' last o' t' old stock – for ye and Mr. St John is like of a different soart to them 'at's gone; for all your mother wor mich i' your way; and a'most as book-learned. She wor the pictur' o' ye, Mary: Diana is more like your father.«
    I thought them so similar I could not tell where the old servant (for such I now concluded her to be) saw the difference. Both were fair complexioned and slenderly made; both possessed faces full of distinction and intelligence. One, to be sure, had hair a shade darker than the other, and there was a difference in their style of wearing it: Mary's pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth; Diana's duskier tresses covered her neck with thick curls. The clock struck ten.
    »Ye'll want your supper, I'm sure,« observed Hannah; »and so will Mr. St John when he comes in.«
    And she proceeded to prepare the meal. The ladies rose; they seemed about to withdraw to the parlour. Till this moment, I had been so intent on watching them, their appearance and conversation had excited in me