Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/27

Rh "The teacher is not as a stranger, when Annettechen and Mariska so love her," said Wilhelm, who was on Margaret's side from the beginning. "But do you remember, young lady, that you have never known such ways as are our ways? It would be a great shame to my heart if you were not at ease in my house; and we can not change."

With every word that Wilhelm and Annette spoke, Margaret grew more and more anxious to carry her point.

"It is you who do not know," she said, "how very simply and plainly I have always lived at home, and it is so that I would wish to live even if I had much money. My father is a poor minister; my mother has never, in all her life, had so pretty a home as this."

And Margaret sighed, as she looked around at the picturesque little sitting-room; its white porcelain stove was now converted into a sort of altar, holding two high candlesticks, made out of the polished horns of antelopes—a crimson candle in one, and a yellow one in the other, and between the two a square stone jar of dark, blue and gray Flemish ware, filled with white amaranths. Low oaken chests, simply but quaintly carved, stood on each side the stove, and a row of tiles, maroon colored and white, with pictures of storks, and herons, and edelweiss flowers, and pine trees on them, was above each chest. The