The Brick Moon, and Other StoriesHale, Edward Everett
Science
The Brick Moon, and Other Stories
Hale, Edward Everett
Short stories; 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 veil, 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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