'Mrs Lambert ought to think twice before she sends out that girl a-shopping,' Mrs Symes said to Sam the footboy. 'She is a vast deal too dainty to walk Bristol streets alone. I've seen the fellows turn and stare at her as she crosses the square, and as to Chatterton, he has eyes for nothing when she is by. I declare if ever eyes were like evil eyes they are that mad boy's.'
Then Mrs Symes wiped her face with her apron, and said the kitchen was enough to stifle her, proceeded to pursue her scrubbing and cleaning with great vehemence.
Meanwhile Bryda went gaily on her way. She was very susceptible of the circumstances of the moment, and the summer air playing amongst the sails of the ships, as she got to the quay, and the water rippling at their sides, where the sunbeams danced and sparkled, gave her a sense of life and gladness which for the moment made her forget how near she was standing to the day when the Squire would again put before her the alternative of seeing her grandfather's stock sold, and so ruining him for the future as a farmer—or marrying him.
The idea seemed preposterous to her, and she shrank from it with the shrinking of a pure, high-minded girl.
She had finished her purchases, and carefully counted the change in the large leather purse, when the cathedral bells, chiming as she passed, made her think she would go in for the service.
There were not more than half-a-dozen straggling worshippers, and the prayers were made as short as possible by the irreverent fashion in which they were hurried over. But Bryda's ear caught the words of the anthem, which, by the care of the organist, was really the only devotional part of the service.
It was but a fragment from Handel's Messiah, but it was well sung, and the words struck home to Bryda's heart.
As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. For as by man came death, by man came also the resurrection from the dead.
Death, on which she had so often meditated—death, which had for her so much of darkness and fear—death could be changed by Him who had conquered death—'All be made alive.'
The beauty of the music and the words acted like a spell on her, and she forgot the passing of time, till, as the half-dozen old men and women tottered away to their homes, she raised her head to see the verger beckoning to her.