Page:Fairy tales and stories (Andersen, Tegner).djvu/164

132 old ones told fairy tales about brownies and trolls. "It could not be better!"

"How beautiful it is here in the winter!" said the little girl as all the trees stood covered with hoar frost, looking like white corals. The snow creaked under foot as if all the people were wearing new boots, and from the sky fell one shooting star after another. In the parlor the Christmas tree was lighted; there were presents, and all were in good spirits. In the country the violin was heard in the peasant's parlor; and there were scrambles for slices of apples. Even the poorest child said: "It is beautiful in winter-time!"

Yes, it was delightful! The little girl showed the boy everything, while the elder-tree filled the air with scent, and the red flag with the white cross was waving, the flag under which the old sailor in Nvboder had sailed! And the boy grew up and was going out into the wide world, far away to the hot countries where the coffee grows ; but when they parted the little girl took an elder flower from her breast and gave it to him to keep. It was placed in his hymn-book, and whenever he opened the book in foreign lands, it always opened at the place where the flower lay, and the more he looked at it the fresher it grew; he seemed to breathe the air of the Danish woods, and between the leaves of the flowers he could plainly see the little girl peeping out with her clear blue eyes, and then she whispered: "How beautiful it is here in spring, in summer, in autumn, and in winter," while a hundred pictures passed before him.

Thus many years had passed and he was now an old man and sat with his wife under the blossoming tree; they held each other by the hand, just as great-grandfather and great-grandmother had done out at Nyboder, and like them, talked about the old days and of the golden wedding; the little girl with the blue eyes and the elder flowers in her hair was sitting up in the tree, nodding to them both, and saying: "To-day it is the golden wedding-day!" And then she took two flowers from his wreath and kissed them; they shone first like silver, and then like gold, and when she placed them on the heads of the old couple, each flower became a golden crown. There they both sat, like a king and queen, under the fragrant tree, which looked exactly like an elder-tree; and he told his old wife the story about elder-tree mother, just as it had been told him, when he was a little boy, and they both thought there was so much in it, which resembled their own and these parts they liked best.

"Yes, that's how it is!" said the little girl in the tree. "Some call me elder-tree mother, others call me a dryad, but my proper name is 'Memory'; it is I who sit in the tree which goes on growing and growing. I can remember; I can relate. Let me see if you still have your flower!" And the old man opened his hymn-book and there lav the elder flower as fresh as if it had just been put there, and Memory nodded, and the two