Meanwhile Catherine carried off a copy of Petrarch, and instantly turned it over to Esther, seeming to think it a matter of course that she should do so trifling a matter as a sonnet with ease.  “It won’t take you five minutes if you put your mind to it,” she said.  “You can do any thing you like, and any one could make a few rhymes.”  Esther, willing to please her, tried, and exhausted her patience on the first three lines.  Then Catherine told the story to Mr. Dudley, who was so much amused by her ambition that he gave his active aid, and between them they succeeded in helping Esther to make out a sonnet which Mr. Dudley declared to be quite good enough for Hazard.  This done, Esther refused to mix further in the matter, and made Catherine learn her verses by heart.  The young woman found this no easy task, but when she thought herself perfect she told Mr. Hazard, as she would have told a schoolmaster, that she was ready with her sonnet.

“I have finished the sonnet, Mr. Hazard,” she said one morning in a bashful voice, as though she were again at school.

“Where is it, Miss Brooke?”

Then Catherine, drawing herself up, with her hands behind her, began to recite: 

    “Oh, little bird! singing upon your way,
       Or mourning for your pleasant summer-tide,
       Seeing the night and winter at your side,
    The joyous months behind, and sunny day! 
    If, as you know your own pathetic lay,
       You knew as well the sorrows that I hide,
       Nestling upon my breast, you would divide
    Its weary woes, and lift their load away. 
    I know not that our shares would then be even,
       For she you mourn may yet make glad your sight,
    While against me are banded death and heaven;
       But now the gloom of winter and of night
    With thoughts of sweet and bitter years for leaven,
       Lends to my talk with you a sad delight.”

Esther laughed till the tears rolled down her face at the droll effect of these tenderly sentimental verses in Catherine’s mouth, but Hazard took it quite seriously and was so much delighted with Catherine’s recitation that he insisted on her repeating it to Wharton, who took it even more seriously than he.  Hazard knew that the verses were Esther’s, and was not disposed to laugh at them.  Wharton saw that Catherine came out with new beauties in every role she filled, and already wanted to use her as a model for some future frescoed Euterpe.  Esther was driven to laugh alone.

Petrarch and Laura are dangerous subjects of study for young people in a church.  Wharton and Hazard knew by heart scores of the sonnets, and were fond of repeating verses either in the original or in their own translations, and Esther soon picked up what they let fall, being quick at catching what was thrown to her.  She caught verse after verse of Hazard’s favorites, and sometimes he could hear her murmuring as she painted: