“Yeah, yeah,” she replied impatiently. Holding her neck straight to keep from looking up at “Sarsaparilla,” she followed Trotter’s bulk back to her house.
“What did you bring?” Mr. Randolph’s face looked like a child’s before a wrapped-up present. He was sitting right at the edge of the big brown chair.
“The Oxford Book of English Verse,” Gilly mumbled.
He cocked his head. “I beg your pardon?”
“The poems we was reading last year, Mr. Randolph.” Trotter had raised her voice as she always did speaking to the old man.
“Oh, good, good,” he said, sliding back into the chair until his short legs no longer touched the worn rug.
Gilly opened the book. She flipped through the junk at the beginning and came to the first poem. “Cuckoo Song,” she read the title loudly. It was rather pleasant being able to do something well that none of the rest of them could. Then she glanced at the body of the poem.
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springth the wude nu—
Sing cuccu!
Cuckoo was right. “Wait a minute,” she muttered, turning the page.
Bytuene Mershe ant Averil…
She looked quickly at the next.
Lenten ys come with love to toune,…
And the next—
Ichot a burde in boure bryht,
That fully semly is on syht,…
She slammed the book shut. They were obviously trying to play a trick on her. Make her seem stupid. See, there was Mr. Randolph giggling to himself. “It’s not in English!” she yelled. “You’re just trying to make a fool of me.”
“No, no, Miss Gilly. Nobody’s trying to make a fool of you. The real old English is at the front. Try over a way.”
“You want the Wordsworth one, Mr. Randolph?” asked Trotter. “Or do you have that by heart?”
“Both,” he said happily.
Trotter came over and leaned across Gilly, who was sitting on the piano bench. “I can find it,” said Gilly, pulling the book out of her reach. “Just tell me the name of it.”
“William Wordsworth,” said Mr. Randolph. “There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,…” He folded his small hands across his chest, his voice no longer pinched and polite, but soft and warm.
Gilly found the page and began to read:
“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,