Jane Eyre Read-Along: Chapter 9

Holy semicolons, Batman!

Anyway, this starts out cheerfully -- spring is here, Jane isn't frozen half the time, and she gets to roam around pretty flower gardens and the woods!  But then we learn that all is not cheerful -- "forty-five out of the eighty girls lay ill at one time" (p. 91).  Good heavens.  Places like Lowood, with too little food and too many people crammed into unhealthy living quarters, must have been regularly devastated by disease, don't you think?  Poor...