Page:Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1888).djvu/79

 and put forth green shoots, until it became in time the great tree under which we old people are now seated.’ ‘To be sure,’ he replied; ‘and in that corner yonder, stands the water-butt in which I used to swim my boat that I had cut out all myself, and it sailed well, too; but since then I have learnt a very different kind of sailing.’ ‘Yes, but before that, we went to school,’ said she, and then we were prepared for confirmation,—how we both cried on that day! but in the afternoon we went, hand in hand, up to the round tower, and saw the view over Copenhagen, and across the water;



then we went to Fredericksburg, where the king and queen were sailing in their beautiful boat on the river.’ ‘But I had to sail on a very different voyage elsewhere, and be away from home for years on long voyages,’ said the old sailor. ‘Ah yes, and I used to cry about you,’ said she ‘for I thought you must be dead, and lying drowned at the bottom of the sea, with the waves sweeping over you. And many a time have I got up in the night to see if the weathercock had turned; it turned often enough, but you came not. How well I remember one day, the rain pouring down from the skies,