All her handy ways were rapidly winning her favour, and Mrs Lambert called her 'a very notable young person, not at all like one brought up in a farmhouse!'
When the tea was over Bryda cleared it away, and carefully washing the handleless cups, replaced them in the corner cupboard. Then she took a seat by the window, at Mrs Lambert's request, and read to her—a dry sermon first, and then Mrs Lambert told her she might go to the bookcase and choose a book for her own reading.
Bryda's eyes kindled with delight, and she joyfully accepted the offer.
'May I choose any book, madam?'
'Any book that is not a novel. There are some there not for Sunday reading, or indeed for workaday reading for a young person.'
'Milton's Paradise Lost,' Bryda said, 'may I take that?'
'Yes, but be careful not to finger the binding, and remember no book leaves this room. I found the apprentice had dared to abstract a volume of an old poet—which I am sure he could not read—by name Chaucer, for the poems are wrote in old English. He had a deserved reprimand, and a box on the ears for his pains.'
'Old English,' thought Bryda, 'old English, Tom Chatterton can read old English, for I suppose Rowley the priest's poems are in old English.'