"Why, you know, Judith," he said, "you have spoken to me many a time about Sir Philip Sidney; and I was asking this one and the other, at times, and Prudence said she would show me a book he had written that belongs to her brother. And then to-day, when I went to her, she bade me bring the book to you, and to read to you, for that you were not well and might be pleased to hear it, she not being able to come over till the morrow."
"In truth, now, that was well thought of, and friendly," said she, and she put her hand in a kindly fashion on his shoulder. "And you have come all the way over to read to me! see you how good a thing it is to be wise and instructed. Well, then, we will go and sit by the door, that you may have more of light; and if my grandmother catch us at such idleness, you shall have to defend me—you shall have to defend me, sweetheart—for you are the man of us two, and I must be shielded."
So they went to the door, and sat down on the step, the various-colored garden and the trees and the wide heavens all shining before them.
"And what is the tale, Cousin Willie?" said she, quite pleasantly (for indeed she was glad to see the boy, and to chat with one who had no reproaches for her, who knew nothing against her, but was ever her true lover and slave). "Nay, if it be by Sir Philip Sidney, 'twill be of gallant and noble knights, assuredly."
"I know not, Cousin Judith," said he; "I but looked at the beginning as I came through the fields. And this is how it goes."
He opened the book and began to read—
"'It was in the time that the Earth begins to put on her new apparel against the approach of her lover, and that the sun running a most even course becomes an indifferent arbiter between the night and the day, when the hopeless shepherd Strephon was come to the sands which lie against the island of Cythera, where, viewing the place with a heavy kind of delight, and sometimes casting his eyes to the isleward, he called his friendly rival the pastor Claius unto him, and, setting first down in his darkened countenance a doleful copy of what he would speak, "O my Claius," said he——'"
Thus he went on; and as he read, her face grew more and more wistful. It was a far-off land that she heard of; and beautiful it was; it seemed to her that she had been dwelling in some such land, careless and all unknowing.
"'The third day after,'" she vaguely heard him say, "'in the time that the morning did strew roses and violets in the heavenly floor against the coming of the sun, the nightingales, striving one with the other which could in most dainty variety recount their wrong-caused sorrow, made them put off their sleep, and rising from under a tree, which that night had been their pavilion, they went on their journey, which by-and-by welcomed Musidorus's eyes with delightful prospects. There were hills which garnished their proud heights with stately trees; humble valleys whose base estate seemed comforted with the refreshing of silver rivers; meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers; thickets which, being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so to by the cheerful disposition of many well-tuned birds; each pasture stored with sheep, feeding with sober security, while the pretty lambs, with bleating oratory, craved the dams' comfort; here a shepherd's boy piping, as though he should never be old; there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal singing; and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voice-music.'"