United States or Cook Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Oh dear!" she sighed and laid the doll back in the cupboard in which the clean pillowcases and Frida's and her Sunday hats were together with all kinds of odds and ends "how time flies. Now she's already nine." "Ten," corrected Frida. "I'm ten to-day, mother." "Right dear me, are you already ten?" The woman laughed and shook her head, surprised at her own forgetfulness.
She had praised Frida's bran-new, many coloured check frock, and had lifted up her fair plait on which the blue bow was dangling: "Oh, how thick!" and she had remarked on Artur's shiny boots and Flebbe's hair, which was covered with pomade and which he wore plastered down on both sides of his healthy-looking footman's face with a parting in the middle.
In all the world there was for him no sign or semblance of any being whose desires or strictest rights could be thought of more than once when set against his daughter's. This, of course, was very bad for Frida's own improvement. It could not make her selfish yet, but it really made her wayward.
One day towards the end of June, the strange young man had gone round to The Grange that was the name of Frida's house for his usual relaxation after a very tiring and distressing day in London, "on important business." The business, whatever it was, had evidently harrowed his feelings not a little, for he was sensitively organised. Frida was on the tennis-lawn.
What might next have happened he himself hardly knew, for he was an impulsive creature, and Frida's rich lips were full and crimson, had not Philip's arrival with the two Miss Hardys to make up a set diverted for the moment the nascent possibility of a leading incident. It was a Sunday afternoon in full July, and a small party was seated under the spreading mulberry tree on the Monteiths' lawn.
Then he returned quite calmly, as if nothing had happened, to Frida's side, with that quiet little smile on his unruffled countenance.
Frida's passionate exclamations of love and grief when she saw the dead body of the man who lay in Johann Schmidt's hut removed all doubt from the minds of those who heard her as to the relationship between them; and the manner in which the child turned from a crucifix which Gretchen brought forward to her, thinking it would comfort her, convinced them more firmly that the poor man had indeed been a heretic.
She certainly was in no hurry about it, as she did not say anything to Frida that day, and the next afternoon it so chanced that business took her to the bank and post-office. Her way home again lay through the Summit woods. It recalled to her the memorable occasion when she was first a witness to Frida's flirtations. Neither that nor Mr.
He did it with so much graceful and gracious courtesy, and such manly gratitude for the favour done him, that he left still more deeply than ever on Frida's mind the impression of a gentleman.
And so, amid chattering and laughing, the tree got on and was finished; and all I am going to say about it is that for long years afterwards that particular Christmas-tree was remembered and spoken of, and in far other scenes in crowded drawing-rooms filled with gaily-dressed children and grown-up people Frida's eyes would fill as she thought of the joy that Christmas-tree had given to the dwellers in the Forest, both young and old.
Word Of The Day