TRUYỆN CỔ ANDERSEN - Trang 938

friends were dead; and the little boy kissed his hand to the coffin as the
hearse moved away with it. A few days after, there was an auction at the old
house, and from his window the little boy saw the people carrying away the
pictures of old knights and ladies, the flower-pots with the long ears, the old
chairs, and the cup-boards. Some were taken one way, some another. Her
portrait, which had been bought at the picture dealer’s, went back again to
his shop, and there it remained, for no one seemed to know her, or to care
for the old picture. In the spring; they began to pull the house itself down;
people called it complete rubbish. From the street could be seen the room in
which the walls were covered with leather, ragged and torn, and the green in
the balcony hung straggling over the beams; they pulled it down quickly,
for it looked ready to fall, and at last it was cleared away altogether. “What
a good riddance,” said the neighbors’ houses. Very shortly, a fine new house
was built farther back from the road; it had lofty windows and smooth
walls, but in front, on the spot where the old house really stood, a little
garden was planted, and wild vines grew up over the neighboring walls; in
front of the garden were large iron railings and a great gate, which looked
very stately. People used to stop and peep through the railings. The
sparrows assembled in dozens upon the wild vines, and chattered all
together as loud as they could, but not about the old house; none of them
could remember it, for many years had passed by, so many indeed, that the
little boy was now a man, and a really good man too, and his parents were
very proud of him. He was just married, and had come, with his young wife,
to reside in the new house with the garden in front of it, and now he stood
there by her side while she planted a field flower that she thought very
pretty. She was planting it herself with her little hands, and pressing down
the earth with her fingers. “Oh dear, what was that?” she exclaimed, as
something pricked her. Out of the soft earth something was sticking up. It
was-only think! -it was really the tin soldier, the very same which had been
lost up in the old man’s room, and had been hidden among old wood and
rubbish for a long time, till it sunk into the earth, where it must have been
for many years. And the young wife wiped the soldier, first with a green
leaf, and then with her fine pocket-handkerchief, that smelt of such