ak to me like this if I were not poor. The
apprentice is right, poverty is a curse, though Betty will not have it
so; and how shameful of the Squire to speak of private affairs to Mr
Lambert--about _me_. No, not even to save poor old grandfather will I
have any more to do with him. After all, if the stock is sold, there
will be the garden and the poultry and the dairy. I forget, though, if
there are no cows there will be no milk--still there will be a roof over
grandfather's head, and Silas will stand by him.'

Bryda continued to win favour with Mrs Lambert, and she snatched many an
odd half-hour to read, taking a book from the cedar-lined bookcase and
reading while Mrs Lambert dosed in her chair, or was engaged with some
crony who looked in for a gossip, when Bryda had only eyes for her
book, not ears for what was being said by the furthest window of the
little parlour.

_The Vicar of Wakefield_ fed Bryda's romance, and Milton fired her
enthusiasm by his lofty strain. With the book on her knee, and some fine
lace of Mrs Lambert's in her hand, which she was supposed to be darning,
Bryda committed to heart 'Lycidas,' and 'L'Allegro,' while the faithful
Abdiel in the larger poem became a living personage to her.

Writing to Bet was more difficult to achieve, but she used to kneel at
the window seat in her little attic and set down the thoughts of every
day as they occurred to her. As the month passed she felt some
uneasiness for fear Mr Bayfield should make any further sign.

To take a stroll at a slow and measured pace with Mrs Lambert was one of
her duties. Sometimes the old lady would go to the pump-room and drink a
glass of the water, and Bryda was quietly amused to watch the gay crowd
flitting here and there in the sunshine of the beautiful summer weather.

Sometimes a short cough struck upon her ear, and her heart would go out
in sympathy with some hectic invalids who, with the invariable desire of
consumptive patients to appear better than they are, would sink
exhausted on one of the benches, and then start up again to walk with a
gaily dressed beau to the strains of the band playing under the row of
trees before the houses.

'She will die before July is out,' Bryda heard someone near her say of a
girl who had just recovered from a violent fit of coughing, and was
placed in a sedan chair by her mother, resisting it and saying,--

'I had much rather walk. Don't make a fuss, pray.'

'Death so near, and life s