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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."¡¡¡¡¡­¡­