L. So am I, Kate. The sky has quite an Irish way with it. But I don't see why Irish girls should also look so dismal. Fancy that you don't want to crystallize yourselves: you didn't, the day before yesterday, and you were not unhappy when it rained then. FLORRIE. Ah! but we do want to-day; and the rain's so tiresome. L. That is to say, children, that because you are all the richer by the expectation of playing at a new game, you choose to make yourselves unhappier than when you had nothing to look forward to, but the old ones. ISABEL. But then, to have to wait--wait--wait; and before we've tried it;--and perhaps it will rain to-morrow, too! L. It may also rain the day after to-morrow. We can make ourselves uncomfortable to any extent with perhapses, Isabel. You may stick perhapses into your little minds, like pins, till you are as uncomfortable as the Lilliputians made Gulliver with their arrows, when he would not lie quiet. ISABEL. But what ARE we to do to-day? L. To be quiet, for one thing, like Gulliver when he saw there was nothing better to be done. And to practice patience. I can tell you, children, THAT requires nearly as much practicing as music; and we are continually losing our lessons when the master comes. Now, to-day, here's a nice, little adagio lesson for us, if we play it properly. ISABEL. But I don't like that sort of lesson. I can't play it properly. L. Can you play a Mozart sonata yet, Isabel? The more need to practice. All one's life is a music, if one touches the notes rightly, and in time. But there must be no hurry. KATHLEEN. I'm sure there's no music in stopping in on a rainy day. L. There's no music in a "rest," Katie, that I know of: but there's the making of music in it. And people are always missing that part of the life-melody; and scrambling on without counting-- not that it's easy to count; but nothing on which so much depends ever IS easy. People are always talking of perseverance, and courage, and fortitude; but patience is the finest and worthiest part of fortitude,--and the rarest, too. I know twenty persevering girls for one patient one: but it is only that twenty-first who can do her work, out and out, or enjoy it. For patience lies at the root of all pleasures, as well as of all powers. Hope herself ceases to be happiness, when Impatience companions her. (ISABEL and LILY sit down on the floor, and fold their hands. The others follow their example.) Good children! but that's not quite the way of it, neither. Folded hands are not necessarily resigned ones. The Patience who really smiles at grief usually stands, or walks, or even runs: she seldom sits; though she may sometimes have to do it, for many a day, poor thing, by monuments; or like Chaucer's, "with face pale, upon a hill of sand." But we are not reduced to that to-day. Suppose we use this calamitous fore-noon to choose the shapes we are to crystallize into? we know nothing about them yet.