‘This you can read,’ said Henry, producing the Canterbury Tales; ‘the fair minstrelsy of my Lady of Suffolk’s grandsire.’
Eleanor was enchanted. Here were the lines the King of Wight had repeated to her, and she was soon eagerly listening as Henry read to her the story of ‘Patient Grisell.’
‘Ah! but is it well thus tamely to submit?’ she asked.
‘Patience is the armour and conquest of the godly,’ said Henry, quoting a saying that was to serve ‘the meek usurper’ well in after-times.
‘May not patience go too far?’ said Eleanor.
‘In this world, mayhap,’ said he; ‘scarcely so in that which is to come.’
‘I would not be the King’s bride to hear him say so,’ laughed the Lady of Suffolk. ‘Shall I tell her, my lord, that this is your Grace’s ladder to carry her to heaven?’
Henry blushed like a girl, and said that he trusted never to be so lacking in courtesy as the knight; and the King of Wight, wishing to change the subject, mentioned that the Lady Eleanor had sung or said certain choice ballads, and Henry eagerly entreated for one. It was the pathetic ‘Wife of Usher’s Well’ that Eleanor chose, with the three sons whose hats were wreathen with the birk that
‘Neither grew in dyke nor ditch,
Nor yet in any shaugh,
But at the gates of Paradise
That birk grew fair eneugh.’
Henry was greatly delighted with the verse, and entreated her, if it were not tedious, to repeat it over again.