he pot.'

'I have had my tea, madam,' Bryda said.

'Oh! Well you can take another cup, I daresay,' Mrs Lambert said
graciously. 'I am getting a little faint,' she added, yawning, 'so I
shall be obliged to you to hasten to brew the tea.'

Bryda lost no time, and descending to the lower regions, set Sam at
liberty till nine o'clock, and very soon had tea and crisp toast ready
for her mistress.

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.'

CHAPTER IX

THE POET'S FRIENDS.

When Chatterton left his mother's house soon after Bryda and Jack
Henderson had gone away together he was in one of his most depressed
moods.

What did anyone care for him or his disappointments and continually
deferred hope that Mr Walpole would at least return the manuscripts, at
first so graciously received, and now it would seem thrown aside as
worthless?

Everything seemed against him, and the gay throng of pleasure seekers on
the fair summer evening was an offence to him.

As he passed over Bristol Bridge he looked down into the river with a
strange longing that he could find rest there, and be free from the
torments of disappointed life and fruitless aims.

As he leaned over the parapet, gazing down into the dun-coloured waters,
a hand was laid on