midday
Good-by , old friend , you have been well-behaved and listened with considerable patience to a long discourse . It will benefit you about as much as I have been benefited by many a lecture and many a sermon I was compelled to listen to in the old vanished days . '' Bestowing another caress on him I got up and went back to the house , thinking sadly as I walked that the bright weather had not yet greatly improved my spirits . Arrived at the house I was again disappointed at not seeing Yoletta ; yet without reasonable cause , since it was scarcely past midday , and she came out from attending on her mother only at long intervals -- in the morning , and again just before evening -- to taste the freshness of nature for a few minutes . The music-room was deserted when I went there ; but it was made warm and pleasant by the sun shining brightly in at the doors opening to the south . I went on to the extreme end of the room , remembering now that I had seen some volumes there when I had no time or inclination to look at them , and I wanted something to read ; for although I found reading very irksome at this period , there was really little else I could do . I found the books -- three volumes -- in the lower part of an alcove in the wall ; above them , within a niche in the alcove , on a level with my face as I stood there , I observed a bulb-shaped bottle , with a long thin neck , very beautifully colored .