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Cannon was standing with the hoe she had been using raised over Hulda's head, while a demoniac expression of rage distorted her not unpleasing features. Levin walked at once to the window and whistled, as if to the bird in the tree. The older woman immediately dropped her hoe, and cried out to Levin: "Heigh, son! ain't you most a-starved fur yer breakfast?
At the idea another hideous thought came to her mind: to settle Hulda's fate in her young lover's absence, and monopolize the corrupting power over Levin Dennis, if he ever lived to see Johnson's Cross-roads again.
One Friday evening of December, when miry snow underfoot and grayish fog all around combined to make Spitalfields a malarious marsh, the Red Beadle, coming in with the week's wages, found to his horror a doctor hovering over Hulda's bed like the shadow of death. From the look that Zussmann gave him he saw a sudden change for the worse had set in.
The first thing to be done was to select the bride's maid of honor. That proved an easy matter, however, for Hulda's choice was already made. The bride-maid, of course, must be Hulda's intimate friend, Farmer Helmboe's daughter. Her father was a prominent man, and the possessor of a very comfortable fortune.
"Ah, well, Mister Sylvius, you can do us a great honor." "How?" "By consenting to be present at my sister Hulda's marriage, if it would not inconvenience you too much." "Hulda's marriage!" exclaimed Sylvius Hogg. "What! my little Hulda is going to be married, and no one has said a word to me about it!" "Oh, Mister Sylvius!" exclaimed the girl, her eyes filling with tears.
Hulda's grandmother had also dropped a ring into this cake before it was put into the oven, and it is well known that whoever gets such a ring in his or her slice of cake has only to wish for something directly, and the fairies are bound to give it, if they possibly can. There have been cases known when the fairies could not give it, and then, of course, they were not to blame.
She was often heard to censure it, especially in Hulda's absence, a fact that caused poor Joel not a little mortification and chagrin, for he was very much afraid that she would not always confine herself to covert censure, and that she would urge Hulda to accept one of the offers she had received. "Five thousand marks for the ticket!" she repeated again and again.
For a long time he had fully appreciated Joel's sterling worth, and his daughter Siegfrid's appreciation, though of a rather different nature, was certainly no less profound; so it was quite probable that at no very distant day after Siegfrid had served as Hulda's maid of honor, Hulda, in turn, would act in the same capacity for her friend.
Hulda's grandmother had sent her a great cake, and when the children had played enough at all the games they could think of, the old gray-headed servants brought it in and set it on the table, together with a great many other nice things such as people eat in Norway pasties made of reindeer meat, and castles of the sweet pastry sparkling with sugar ornaments of ships and flowers and crowns, and cranberry pies, and whipped cream as white as the snow outside; but nothing was admired so much as the great cake, and when the children saw it they set up a shout which woke the two hounds who were sleeping on the hearths, and they began to bark, which roused all the four dogs in the kennels outside who had not been invited to see either the cake or the games, and they barked, too, shaking and shivering with cold, and then a great lump of snow slid down from the roof, and fell with a dull sound like distant thunder on the pavement of the yard.
She touched the moth with the wand, and instantly it stood upon her wrist a beautiful and joyous fairy. She took her wand from Hulda's hand, and stood for a moment looking gratefully in her face without speaking. Then she said to the wand: "Art thou my own again, and wilt thou serve me?" "Try me," said the wand.
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