Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/372

382 rich natural mythology of her native island? If so, you have thus seen a young girl, surrounded by good and evil fairies, which appertain to her by right of birth, and which have influence over her life. My summer-daughter is such a fairy-child as this, and in a still more perfect degree than the English heroine of Dove Cote, because she is really subject to the mystical spirits of nature and their inexplicable influences, and does not always overcome them as is the case with Mrs. Hall's beautiful, ideal Eva. Tn the morning she is the property of the black elves, pretty and sweet as she looks all the time; gloomy thoughts and presentiments then reign in her soul and rest upon her brow, and gaze from her serious dark eyes. She is then silent and occupied by her own thoughts, and willingly seeks the solitude of her own room. In the bath she again becomes the Princess Elsa, or the cheerfully thoughtful young woman, in whose soul dwells a wisdom which awakes admiration in one so young, and which sounds extraordinary from those child-like lips. These moods of mind alternate through the day. In the twilight she reclines for a while upon her sofa, in order, as she says, to give audience to her thoughts. But I suspect that the little imps then, protected by the twilight shadows, play their tricks with her, because when she gets up at 7 o'clock for our tea she is quite changed. Then and during the whole evening she is the Princess Elsa in all respects; in her captivating vivacity, in her playful whims and sallies of humor, which sometimes amount to impertinence. Then is her musical vein awakened to new life, and she will play, now lively, now plaintive pieces, always full of