'Do not say so. Life is so sweet and beautiful,' Bryda exclaimed. 'Though I have many cares at this time, yet I love life, and even in Dowry Square I think it is good to be alive.'
'Aye, to you, doubtless,' was the reply. 'But now for the verse from the "History of Painting."
When spring came dancing on a flowery bed,
Clothed in green raiment of a changing kind,
The leaves of hawthorn budding o'er his head,
And with fair primroses waving in the wind,
Then did the shepherd his white garment spread
Upon the green bank, and danced all around,
Whilst the sweet flowerets nodded on his head,
And his fair lambs were scattered on the ground;
Beneath his foot the brooklet ran along,
Which strolleth round the vale to hear his joyous song.
'There, Miss Palmer, you have a song of spring, wrote hundreds of years ago. I tell it to you in the language of to-day, but it is ten times sweeter in the beauteous rhythm of the olden time.'
'It would not be sweeter to me,' Bryda said; 'for though I found the "History of the Opening of the Bristol Bridge" full of beauty, yet it teased me to scan the words though I made out their meaning at last. How could you find them out—who helped you?'
Chatterton laughed.
'My dear young lady I helped myself to the Saxon language as to most other things. If I trusted to other help I should be worse off than I am. When first it dawned on me that the friend and confessor of Canynge had wrote all these poems for the edifying of his patron, I toiled night and day till I was able to interpret them for this perverse generation. But I had my friends. Mr Catcott is one, Mr Barrett, a surgeon, another, and now let me count as a friend one fairer than they, your sweet self.'
'As we live under the same roof, we may well be friends, but if, as you say, you are yet but sixteen years old, you are so much younger than I am.'
'Nay, older by a score of years,' Chatterton interrupted. 'For age is not counted by years, but by the strife and the struggle and the misery through which the soul passes. In this I am your senior.'
'Nay,' Bryda said gently, 'we cannot enter into each other's secret heart. We all know our own troubles. I have mine, and I am now parted from a sister I love, and I am, after a week's absence, hungering for her tender care.'