"But I told you what to study," objected Thyrsis.

"Yes," said the girl; "but how could I do it? You know how to
study--you've been taught. But I don't know anything, and I don't
know how to find anything out. I began on the Latin, but I didn't
even know how the words should be pronounced."

"Nobody else knows that," observed Thyrsis, somewhat inconsequently.

"It was all so dull and dreary," she went on--"everything they would
have had me learn. I wanted things that had life in them, things
that were beautiful and worth while--like this book of yours, for
instance."

"I am really delighted that you like it," said Thyrsis, touched by
that.

"Tell me the rest of it," she said.

Section 3. Thyrsis told his story at some length; in the ardor of
her sympathy his imagination took fire, and he told it eloquently,
he discovered new beauties in it that he had not seen before. And
Corydon listened with growing delight and amazement.

"So that is the way you spend your time!" she exclaimed.

"That is the way," he said.

"And that is why you live like a hermit!"