Crusoe in New York, and other talesHale, Edward Everett
General
Crusoe in New York, and other tales
Hale, Edward Everett
New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
We were teaching Frida English, my mother and I, and she and I made a
great frolic of her teaching me Swedish. I would bring home Swedish
newspapers and stories for her, and we would puzzle them out
together,--she as much troubled to find the English word as I to find
out the Swedish. Then she sang like a bird, when she was about her
household work, or when she sat sewing for my mother, and she had not
lived with us a fortnight before she began to join us on Sunday
evenings in the choruses of the Methodist hymns which my mother and I
sang together. So then we made her sing Swedish hymns to us. And,
before she knew it, the great tears would brim over her deep eyes, and
would run down in pearls upon her cheek. Nothing set her to thinking of
her old home as those Sunday evenings did. Of a Sunday evening we could
make her go out with us to church sometimes. Not but then she would
half cover her face with a vail, so afraid was she that we might meet
the Dane. But I told her that the last place we should find him at
would be at church on Sunday evening.
I have come far in advance of my story, that I might make any one who
reads this life of mine to understand how naturally and simply this
poor lost bird nestled down into our quiet life, and how the house that
was built for two proved big enough for three. For I made some new
purchases now, and fitted up the little middle chamber for Frida's own
use. We had called it the "spare chamber" before, in joke. But now my
mother fitted pretty curtains to it, and other hangings, without
Frida's knowledge. I had a square of carpet made up at the warehouse
for the middle of the floor, and, by making her do one errand and
another in the corner of the garden, one pleasant afternoon in
November, we had it all prettily fitted up for her room before she knew
it. And a great gala we made of it when she came in from gathering the
seeds of the calystegia, which she had been sent for.
She looked like a northern Flora, as she came in, with her arms all
festooned by the vines she had been pulling down. And when my mother
made her come out to the door she had never seen opened before, and led
her in, and told her that this pretty chamber was all her own, the
pretty creature flushed crimson red at first, and then her quick tears
ran over, and she fell on my mother's neck, and kissed her as if she
would never be done. And then she timidly held her hand out to me, too,
as I stood in the doorway, and said, in her slow, careful English,--
"And you, too--and you, too. I must tank you both, also, especially.
You are so good--so good to de poor lost girl!" That was a very happy
evening.
But, as I say, I have gone ahead of my story. For before we had these
quiet evenings we were fated to have many anxious ones and one stormy
one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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