Part 2 (1/2)
”I shall never be happy again, Stineli, but if you would like to go, I will go with you.”
They arranged their plans so that they could go the following Sunday.
It was not an easy task for Stineli to get away, for Peter, Sam, and Urschli had the measles, and a goat was sick at the stable. She was kept busy from the time she returned from school until late at night.
Sat.u.r.day she worked all day and much later than usual, but did it so willingly and was so cheerful that her father said: ”Stineli is a perfect treasure. She makes us all happy.”
CHAPTER IV
THE DISTANT LAKE WITHOUT A NAME
When Stineli awoke the following morning, she instantly realized that it was Sunday. The grandmother's words of the previous evening were still fresh in her memory, ”You deserve the whole afternoon to-morrow, and you shall have it.”
After dinner, when Stineli had finished all the necessary duties and was prepared to join Rico, Peter called from his bed, ”Stineli, come, stay with me!”
The two others who were ill shouted, ”No, no, Stineli, we want you!”
The father said, ”I should like to have you go to the barn and take a look at the goat first.”
”Hush, everybody!” broke in the grandmother. ”Stineli shall go in peace. I will look after these things myself. Remember, dear, that when the vesper bell rings, you are to come home like good children.”
The grandmother knew that there would be two of them.
Stineli flew away like a bird for whom the door of its cage had been opened, and went directly to Rico, who was waiting as usual. The sun was s.h.i.+ning pleasantly, and the heaven was an unbroken blue above them as they crossed the meadow to reach the hill beyond. They still found patches of snow in the shaded places, until they got up where the whole surface had been exposed to the sun; from here they could see the waves beating steadily against the rocks on the sh.o.r.e. They searched for a dry place on a cliff directly over the water, and here they sat down. The wind was blowing a sharp gale at this height; it whistled in their ears and swayed the woods above them like a living ma.s.s of green.
”Oh, see, Rico, how beautiful it is here!” exclaimed Stineli as she looked about. ”I am so glad that spring has come again. See how the water sparkles in the sunlight. There really cannot be a prettier lake than this one.”
”I should say there is!” exclaimed Rico. ”You ought to see the one I mean! No such black fir trees with needles grow by my lake. We have s.h.i.+ning green leaves and large red flowers there. The hills are not so high and black, nor so near, but show their violet colors from a distance. The sky and water are all a golden glow, and there is such a warm, fragrant air that one can always sit on the sh.o.r.e without being cold. The wind never blows like this, and there is no snow to cover one's shoes as ours are covered now.”
This description convinced Stineli that Rico was not speaking of a place that he had simply dreamed about, so she said half sadly: ”Perhaps you can go there sometime and see it again. Do you know the way?”
”No,” answered Rico, ”but I know that you have to go up the Maloja. I have been as far as that with my father, and he showed me the road that leads ever and ever so far down toward the lake. It is such a long way that you could hardly get there.”
”It would be easy enough,” remarked Stineli. ”All you have to do is just to keep right on going farther and farther and at last you _must_ get there.”
”Yes,” said Rico, ”but father told me something else too. You have to go to hotels to eat and to sleep on the way, and it takes money for that.”
”But think of the money we own together!” cried Stineli.
Rico frowned and said: ”That doesn't amount to anything. I found that out when I wanted to buy a violin.”
”Then you had better stay at home and not go, Rico. It is always nice to be at home.”
Rico sat lost in thought, his head resting on his arm. Stineli was busy gathering some moss and shaping it into pillows, which she intended to take to the sick ones when she and Rico went home. She thought nothing of Rico's silence until he said: ”You say that I can stay at home, but it seems to me exactly as if that were something I did not have. I am sure I don't know where it is.”
”O Rico, what are you saying!” cried the astonished Stineli, letting the moss fall unheeded in her lap. ”You are at home here, of course.
You are always at home where your father and mother--” Here she stopped abruptly as she remembered that Rico had no mother and that his father had not been at home for ever so long, and she shuddered as she thought of his aunt, of whom she had always been afraid. She scarcely knew how to continue, yet it grieved her to see Rico so sadly silent. She impulsively took his hand and said, ”I should like to know the name of the lake where it is so beautiful.”