than any other book.

Rollo knew that when his father told him to go away by himself, he meant
for him to go into this back garret. So he turned round and walked out
of the room. As he passed up the back stairs, the kitten came frisking
around him, but he had no heart to play with her, and walked on. He then
turned and went up the narrow, steep stairs that led to the garret; they
were rather more like a ladder than like stairs. Rollo ascended them,
and then sat down in the little rocking-chair. The rain was beating
against the windows, and pattering on the roof which was just over his
head.

It is sometimes but a little thing which turns the whole current of the
thoughts and feelings. In Rollo's case, at this time, it was but a drop
of water. For after having sat some time in his chair, his heart
remaining pretty nearly the same, a drop of water, which, somehow or
other, contrived to get through some crevice in the boards and shingles
over his head, fell exactly into the back of his neck. The first feeling
it occasioned was an additional emotion of impatience and fretfulness.
But he next began to think how unreasonable and wicked it was to make
all that difficulty, just because his father was preventing his going
out to stay all day in the rain, when a single drop falling upon him
vexed and irritated him.

He also looked out of the window towards the garden, and the dry ground,
and all the trees and garden vegetables seemed to be drinking in the
rain with delight. That made him think of the vast amount of good the
rain was doing, and he saw his own selfishness in a striking point of
view. In a word Rollo was now beginning to be really penitent. The tears
came into his eyes; but they were tears of real sorrow for sin, not of