“Thank you, sir, I am close to my seat.”
“Your visitors acquire blind eyes, Belamour,” said Dr. Godfrey, cheerfully.
“More truly they become eyes to the blind,” was the answer. “I feel myself a man of the world again, since this amiable young lady has conned the papers on my behalf, and given herself the trouble of learning the choicest passages of the poets to repeat to me.”
“You are very good, sir,” returned Aurelia; “it is my great pleasure.”
“That I can well believe,” said Dr. Godfrey. “Have these agreeable recitations made you acquainted with the new poem on the Seasons by Mr. James Thomson?”
“No,” replied Mr. Belamour, “my acquaintance with the belles letters ceased nine years ago.”
“The descriptions have been thought extremely effective. Those of autumn were recalled to my mind on my way.”
Dr. Godfrey proceeded to recite some twenty lines of blank verse, for in those days people had more patience and fewer books, and exercised their memories much more than their descendants do. Listening was far from being thought tedious.
“‘But see the fading many-coloured roads,
Shade deepening over shade, the country round
Imbrown; a crowded umbrage, dusk and dim,
Of every hue, from wan, declining green,
To sooty dark.’”
The lines had a strange charm to one who had lived in darkness through so many revolving years. Mr. Belamour eagerly thanked his friend, and on the offer to lend him the book, begged that it might be ordered for him, and that any other new and interesting work might be sent to him that was suitable to the fair lips on which he was dependent.