CHAPTER XXXVII

MAGLENA

Maglena came running into the cottage, but stopped, silent and embarrassed, just inside the door. She was relieved to see Andy, quite calm and at home, sitting on a three-legged stool in front of the fire.

It was still very painful for her to stay in the room where the wonderfully dressed ladies sat at the table in long white jackets, just now looking only at her.

The minister, who had been in there talking with the ladies, went out just as Maglena came in.

‘Here we have her, as if “sent for.”’ With these words the minister laid his hand softly, with a gentle pat, on the child’s head, before he went out with a kind, meaning glance at his wife.

‘Yes, here we have her, quite right,’ said one of the ladies, the one the children called Aunt Gerda, and who was Sylvia’s mother. In fact she looked a great deal like Sylvia, with soft fair hair like hers, and white and pale, but with a gentle, kind face.

She drew Maglena, who resisted warily, with her, and sat down with her arms caressingly about the stranger-child, who stared at her unbendingly.

‘Do you care anything for Sylvia?’ she asked in a soft voice.

Maglena reddened painfully. She was very uncomfortable, for she had not the faintest idea what this ‘care for’ meant.

‘Sylvia’s mother wonders if you like her little girl, and I have already seen that you do,’ said the other lady, the mother of the other children.

She looked so full of fun and happy that Maglena suddenly smiled at her, though she felt so ill at ease with the other lady.

‘Yes, I think Sylvia is nice enough,’ murmured Maglena.

‘Do you have anything against being her little friend and sister?’ went on Sylvia’s mother. She spoke tenderly, almost pleadingly.

‘Instead of the one that has so much fun up with God?’ asked Maglena, and looked up with big earnest eyes at the fine lady who had such sad ones, and who now, to Maglena’s astonishment and grief, seemed about to cry.

‘Well, but mother is there too, so the little girl must be happy,’ said Maglena in a low voice, intending to comfort the unhappy mother.

‘Do you think so, you little darling?’ whispered the lady. She lifted Maglena up on her lap and leaned her head against her bright curly hair.

Maglena sat as straight as a pin. She looked stupid and uncomfortable and wanted to slide down from her unaccustomed place.

But Andy, to whom she appealed in her anxiety, gave her a warning glance. It meant that he felt sorry for the nice lady, and that she should sit still with her as long as she wanted to hold such a big girl in her lap.

‘Talk to the child, Octavia,’ said the softly weeping, sorrowful mother. She set Maglena carefully down on the floor.

The other ‘happy lady’ with the laughing blue eyes stretched out her hand to Maglena. She kept her arm around her waist while she told her that Sylvia’s mother, together with her herself and her husband, had decided that Maglena should go with them to Stockholm as _their own child_!

‘Is Andy coming too?’ whispered Maglena, her eyes wide with fear.

‘Andy is coming to us. He is already our boy, so that is all settled.’ She nodded gayly and kindly to Andy, who raised his head from his work, pushed his hair from his forehead, and sent a bright glance, beaming with happiness, back again.

The minister’s wife smiled contentedly. Her husband had taken two poor boys before to bring up. But neither of them had shown such wisdom, such a pure sensitive spirit, and such a clear mind as she had already observed in this mountain and ‘famine-years’ son.

‘You know, my little chick, you will be just as well off in Sylvia’s home. And if you consider what is really fine, you’ll be better off.’

‘You’ll have Eva’s doll house,’ said Sylvia’s mother eagerly. She had, while she held Maglena in her arms, learned to love her and thought with hope and joy that the healthy, simple little mountain child would have a good and strengthening influence on her own beloved little girl.

‘A doll house, just think,’ repeated the other, ‘with little rooms, and small, small tables and chairs and pans and plates. Can you imagine that?’

‘And a barn and cows and goats too?’

The lady looked surprised. She had never heard of that sort of doll house.

‘We have _real_ horses instead, little one, and you will ride with us in a carriage.’

‘Do you have a goat like Golden Horn?’ asked Maglena in a rather anxious, plaintive voice.

‘A goat? No, that we haven’t. No one in the city has goats,’ continued the nice lady, confused and perplexed.

‘Andy said once that the king had thousands of goats, and I thought that he lived in the city, and that the goats had golden horns and that I could watch them for the king.’

‘The king hasn’t any goats. But when you’re riding in the carriage you’ll see the king himself, and will bow prettily to him.’

‘When I think about it, Octavia,’ she continued, turning to the minister’s wife, ‘I don’t see why Sylvia and little Maglena here shouldn’t have a goat. There is room for it down in the stables. The coachman will take care of it. Old Bergstrom will do anything to please Sylvia.’

‘If we have a goat, I’ll go. But we can take care of it ourselves, Sylvia and I.’

Mistress Gerda smiled happily over the little one’s confidence and already intimate way of saying ‘Sylvia and I.’

‘You’re right in that, and it will be good for Sylvia. Goat’s milk is wonderful for tuberculosis,’ said the minister’s wife, who, with reason, was worried about her friends’ only child. ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘you have your pretty country place where the island will be a fine place for the goat to graze all summer. Oh, yes, that could all be arranged very well. But now you’re going to hear something else that I know you’ll think is wonderful.’

The minister’s wife, who saw how hard Maglena found it to retain her self-possession, mostly, she knew, at the thought of separation from Andy, thought it best to give the child something else to think about.