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.

(The pictures of resignation rise from the floor not in the patientest manner.  General applause.)

Mary (with one or two others).  The very thing we wanted to ask you about!

Lily.  We looked at the books about crystals, but they are so dreadful.

L. Well, Lily, we must go through a little dreadfulness, that’s a fact:  no road to any good knowledge is wholly among the lilies and the grass; there is rough climbing to be done always.  But the crystal-books are a little too dreadful, most of them, I admit; and we shall have to be content with very little of their help.  You know, as you cannot stand on each other’s heads, you can only make yourselves into the sections of crystals,—­the figures they show when they are cut through; and we will choose some that will be quite easy.  You shall make diamonds of yourselves—­