CHAPTER IThere was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had beenwandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; butsince dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the coldwinter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain sopenetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chillyafternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, withnipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority toEliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.The said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mamain the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and withher 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 adistance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by herown observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire amore sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightlymanner--something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were--she reallymust 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 somethingtruly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Beseated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent."A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. Itcontained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking carethat 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, havingdrawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in doubleretirement.Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the leftwere the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from thedrear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of mybook, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered apale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beatshrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long andlamentable blast.I returned to my book--Bewick's History of British Birds: the letterpressthereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there werecertain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quiteas a blank. They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of"the solitary rocks and promontories" by them only inhabited; of thecoast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, theLindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape-- "Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, Boils round the naked, melancholy isles Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides."Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with "the vastsweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space, --thatreservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulationof centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surroundthe pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold." Ofthese death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like allthe half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pagesconnected themselves with the succeeding vignettes,