Family -- Juvenile fiction; Switzerland -- Juvenile fiction
Cornelli had quite a strange sensation. She hardly dared to say yes;
it seemed so incredible to her that everybody in the house should be
so friendly to her and really want her to stay. But that probably would
not last if she remained and they got to know her better. Soon the
mother came in with Mux. The little boy had heard Dino’s last words
to Cornelli and had already announced to his mother that Cornelli was
sure to stay, because Dino would not let her go.
“Oh, I am so glad that you have settled it all between you! I am so
pleased that you are going to stay, Cornelli,” she said, full of joy.
“I was just going to propose it to you, and I am so glad that Dino has
persuaded you. Your father has already given me his permission and all
I have to do is to let him know right away. Now you can stay quietly
together, for there is no hurry about supper.”
The mother immediately wrote to Mr. Hellmut, and soon after that, fat
little Trina was running over to the hotel.
Cornelli had again settled down beside Dino with a mixed feeling of
wonderful delight and fear. He noticed her timidity.
“Oh, yes, Dino, I love to stay with you and Mux,” she assured him.
“Your mother is so good to me, too, but I am afraid of your two sisters.
I have to think of poor little block-headed Trina all the time, when
she does everything wrong and does not know how to do otherwise; you
all despise her for it and she can’t help it. I know what it is like
to be so block-headed.”
Dino had to laugh a little.
“Why do you suddenly think of our Trina?” he asked. “Do not worry about
her, for mother is very good to her. Just be happy, Cornelli, and do
not imagine all kinds of things about block-headed Trina.”
Cornelli did not say another word, but Dino noticed that she kept on
thinking just the same. After a while the mother came to announce that
it was time for Dino’s rest. The prospect of seeing each other again
on the following day was a great consolation to them both.
Then Cornelli and the mother went back to the room where the sisters
were sitting at their school work. Mux was bending over his picture
book, hatching out new ideas, no doubt. Just then the half grown Trina
entered with a basket on her arm. While she was passing Nika’s chair,
her basket got caught on it. Pulling violently to free it, she turned
the chair around quite suddenly.
“You are getting more awkward every day, Trina,” Nika said crossly.
Cornelli blushed. She felt as if these words were meant for her as
well. She must be just as awkward in Nika’s eyes as Trina was. The
latter failed to excuse herself and from embarrassment became more
clumsy in her movements. Cornelli understood this perfectly; that was
what she always did, she knew it quite well.
“Now we shall have supper,” said the mother, “and when the children’s
work is done we shall all sing together. Don’t you sing, too, Cornelli?”
“I probably do not know the songs, and so I can’t sing,” she replied
shyly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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