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����There was no possibility oftaking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafiess shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out ofthe question.����I was glad ofit. I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings ofBessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.����The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy. Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, "She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation, that I was endeavour- ing in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner-something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were-she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children."����"What does Bessie say I have done?" I asked.����"Jane, I don't like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent."����A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It con- tained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.����Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afiernoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.����I retumed to my book-Bewick's History of British Birds: the letterpress thereofl cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of "the solitary rocks and promontories" by them only inhabited; ofthe coast ofNorway, studded with isles from its southem extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape-"Where the Northem Ocean, in vast whirls, Boils round the naked, melancholy isles Offarthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides."��������