clear in his thoughts. How graceful she was, how gentle, and fluttering, and
pretty she looked. If she were to be drawn, it ought to be on a soap-bubble.
About her dress, about her yellow curled hair, there was a fragrance as of a
fresh-blown rose; and to think that he had once divided his bread and butter
with her, and that she had eaten it with enormous appetite, and nodded to
him at every second mouthful! Did she remember anything about it? Yes,
certainly, for she had given him the beautiful hymn-book in remembrance
of this; and when the first new moon in the first new year after this event
came round, he took a piece of bread, a penny, and his hymn-book, and
went out into the open air, and opened the book to see what psalm he should
turn up. It was a psalm of praise and thanksgiving. Then he opened the book
again to see what would turn up for little Emily. He took great pains not to
open the book in the place where the funeral hymns were, and yet he got
one that referred to the grave and death. But then he thought this was not a
thing in which one must believe; for all that he was startled when soon
afterwards the pretty little girl had to lie in bed, and the doctor’s carriage
stopped at the gate every day.
“They will not keep her with them,” said the porter’s wife. “The good
God knows whom He will summon to Himself.”
But they kept her after all; and George drew pictures and sent them to
her. He drew the Czar’s palace; the old Kremlin at Moscow, just as it stood,
with towers and cupolas; and these cupolas looked like gigantic green and
gold cucumbers, at least in George’s drawing. Little Emily was highly
pleased, and consequently, when a week had elapsed, George sent her a few
more pictures, all with buildings in them; for, you see, she could imagine all
sorts of things inside the windows and doors.
He drew a Chinese house, with bells hanging from every one of sixteen
stories. He drew two Grecian temples with slender marble pillars, and with
steps all round them. He drew a Norwegian church. It was easy to see that
this church had been built entirely of wood, hewn out and wonderfully put
together; every story looked as if it had rockers, like a cradle. But the most
beautiful of all was the castle, drawn on one of the leaves, and which he
