Dame Care Part 5

His mother smiled. Paul wondered that this had never struck him at home.

"She is much cleverer than you are," he thought.

Now they entered the garden. It was much larger and more beautiful than the one at Mussainen, but there was nothing to be seen of a sundial.

Paul had formed a vague idea of it as a great golden tower, on which a round, sparkling disk of the sun formed the dial-plate.

"Where is the sundial, mamma?" he asked.

"I will show it to you afterwards," said the little girl, eagerly.

From the arbor came a tall, slender lady, with a pale, delicate face, on which shone an inexpressibly sweet smile.

His mother gave a cry, and threw herself on her breast, sobbing loudly.

"Thank G.o.d that I have you with me once again!" said the stranger, and kissed his mother on her brow and cheeks.

"Believe me, all will now be well; you will tell me what weighs upon your mind, and it will be strange if I cannot help you."

His mother dried her eyes and smiled.

"Oh, this is pure joy," she said; "I feel already so relieved and happy because I am near you. I have longed for you so much."

"And could you really not come?"

His mother shook her head sadly.

"Poor woman!" said the lady, and both looked for a long time into each other's eyes.

"And this, I suppose, is my G.o.dchild?" the lady exclaimed, pointing towards Paul, who clung to his mother's dress and sucked his thumb.

"Oh, fie! take your finger from your mouth," said his mother. And the beautiful, kind lady took him on her lap, gave him a teaspoonful of honey--"as a sort of foretaste," she said--and asked him after his little sisters, about school, and all sorts of other things which it was not at all difficult to answer, so that at last he almost felt comfortable on her lap.

"And what things do you know already, you little man?" she asked him at last.

"I can whistle," he answered, proudly.

The kind woman laughed heartily, and said, "Well, then, whistle us something."

He pointed his lips and tried to whistle, but the sound would not come; he had forgotten it again.

Then they laughed--the kind lady, the little girl, and even his mother; but tears rose to his eyes with shame; he struggled and kicked, so that the lady had to let him glide down from her lap, and his mother said, reproachfully,

"You are naughty, Paul."

But he went behind the arbor and cried, until the little girl came to him and said:

"Oh dear, you must not cry. G.o.d does not like naughty children." Then he was ashamed again, and rubbed his eyes with his hands till they were dry.

"And now I will show you the sundial," continued the child.

"Oh yes, and the gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s," he said.

"They were broken a long time ago," she replied; "a stone I threw flew by accident into one of them, and the other was blown down by a storm."

And then she showed him the spots where they had stood.

"And this is the sundial," she went on.

"Where?" he asked, looking round, wonderingly.

They were standing before a gray, unpretending post, on which was fastened a sort of wooden plate. The child laughed, and said that this was the sundial.

"Oh, fie!" he retorted, angrily; "you are mocking me."

"Why should I want to mock you?" she asked; "you have never done me any harm." And then she repeated her a.s.sertion that this was the sundial, and nothing else, and she also pointed out to him the hand, a miserable rusty piece of metal, which stuck out from the middle of the dial and threw its shadow just on number six, which was written there among other figures.

"Oh, this is too stupid," he said, and turned away. The sundial in the garden of the White House was the first great disappointment of his life.

When he returned to the arbor with his new friend, he found a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman with bushy whiskers there, who wore a gray shooting-coat, and whose eyes seemed to twinkle merrily.

"Who is that?" asked Paul, timidly, hiding behind his friend.

She laughed and said, "That is my papa; you need not be afraid of him."

And, shouting with joy, she jumped on the strange man's knee.

Then he thought to himself, would he ever dare to jump on _his_ papa's knee, and from this he concluded that all fathers were not alike.

But the man in the shooting-coat caressed his child, kissed her on both cheeks, and let her ride on his knees.

"See! Elsbeth has got a playfellow," said the kind, strange lady, pointing towards Paul, who, hidden by the foliage, glanced shyly towards the arbor.

"Just come here, my boy," the man called out merrily and snapped his fingers.

"Come--here, on the other knee; there is room enough for you," called out the child; and when, with a questioning glance at his mother, he crept timidly nearer, the strange man seized him, put him on his other knee, and then they had a merry race.

He had lost all fear, and when freshly-baked cakes were put on the table, he fell to bravely. His mother stroked his hair and warned him not to eat too much. She spoke very softly, and kept looking down upon the ground before her. And then the children were allowed to go to the bushes and pick gooseberries for themselves.

"Are you really called Elsbeth?" he asked his friend, and as she said "Yes," he expressed his astonishment that she had the same name as his mother.

"But I have been christened after her," said the child; "she is my G.o.dmother."

"Why didn't she kiss you, then?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Elsbeth, sadly, "perhaps she does not like me."

But that she had not had the courage to do it never occurred to either of them.

It already began to grow dark when the children were called back.