Fathers and daughters -- Fiction; Sweden -- Fiction; Swedish fiction -- Translations into English
This, too, was a long wait. But now it was all so different from
the day before. He was standing there in such good company that he
could become neither weary nor disheartened. Nor could he begin to
tell how good it felt to be holding the warm little body pressed
close to his heart. It occurred to him that hitherto he had been
mighty sour and unpleasant, even to himself; but now all was bliss
and sweetness within him. He had never dreamed that one could be so
gladdened by just loving some one.
He had not stationed himself on the doorstep without a purpose, as
may be assumed. It was an important matter that he must try to
settle while standing there. He and Katrina had spent the whole
morning trying to choose a name for the child. They had been at it
for hours, without arriving at a decision. Finally Katrina had
said: "I don't see but that you'll have to take the child and go
stand on the stoop with her. Then you can ask the first female that
happens along what her name is, and the name she names we must give
to the girl, be it ugly or pretty."
Now the hut lay rather out of the way and it was seldom that any
one passed by their place; so Jan had to stand out there ever so
long, without seeing a soul. This was also a gray day, though no
rain fell. It was not windy and cold, however, but rather a bit
sultry. If Jan had not held the little girl in his arms he would
have lost heart.
"My dear Jan Anderson," he would have said to himself. "You must
remember that you live away down in the Ashdales, by Dove Lake,
where there isn't but one decent farmhouse and here and there a
poor fisherman's hut. Who'll you find hereabout with a name that's
pretty enough to give to your little girl?"
But since this was something which concerned his daughter he never
doubted that all would come right. He stood looking down toward the
lake, as if not caring to her how shut in from the whole countryside
it lay, in its rock-basin. He thought it might just happen that
some high-toned lady, with a grand name, would come rowing across
from Doveness, on the south shore of the lake. Because of the
little girl he felt almost sure this would come to pass.
The child slept the whole time; so for all of her he could have
stood there and waited as long as he liked. But the worrisome
person was Katrina! Every other minute she would ask him whether
any one had come along yet and if he thought it prudent to keep the
infant out in the damp air any longer.
Jan turned his eyes up toward Great Peak, rising high above the
little groves and garden-patches of the Ashdales, like a watch
tower atop some huge fortress, keeping all strangers at a distance.
Still it might be possible that some great lady, who had been up to
the Peak, to view the beautiful landscape had taken the wrong path
back and strayed in the direction of Ruffluck.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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