Spring had one of her variable humours, and the next day shewed a change. When Rotha awoke, the light was veiled and a soft rain was thickly falling. Shut up by the weather now! was the first thought. However, she got up, giving thanks for her sweet, guarded sleep, and made her toilet; then, seeing it depended on her alone to take care of her room, she put it carefully in order so far as was possible. It was early still, she was sure, though Rotha had no watch; neither voice nor stir was to be heard anywhere; and turning her back upon her stripped bed, the disorder of which annoyed her, she sat down to her Bible study. It is all I have got! thought she. I must make of it all I can.--May did not give her so much help this morning; the rain drops pattered thick and fast on leaf and window pane; the air was not cold, yet it was not genial either, and Rotha felt a chill creep over her. There was no way of having a fire up there, if she had wanted one. She opened her beloved books, to try and forget other things if she could. She would not go down stairs until it was certain that breakfast would be near ready. Carrying on the line of study broken off yesterday, the first words to which she was directed were those in 2 Cor. iv. 17, 18. "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen--" Poor Rotha at this immediately rebelled. Nothing in the words was pleasant to her. She was wont always to live in the present, not in the future; and she would be willing to have the glory yonder less great, so it were not conditioned by the trouble here. And with her young life pulses, warm and vigorous as they were, to look away from the seen to the unseen things seemed well nigh impossible and altogether undesirable. It was comfort that she wanted, and not renunciation. She was missing her friends and her home and her pursuits; she was in barren exile, amid a social desert; a captive in bonds that though not of iron were still, to her, nearly as strong. She wanted deliverance and gladness; or at least, manna; not to look away from all and find her solace in a distant vision of better things.