THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
By Xavier B. Saintine
A white figure appeared before the young girl as she awoke. “I am your Guardian Angel!”
“Then you will grant me the wishes which I shall mention?”
“I shall carry them to God’s throne. You may count upon my assistance. What are your wishes?”
“O White Angel, I am tired of continually turning the spindle and my fingers are getting to be so hard by constant work that yesterday, at the dance, my partner might have imagined he was holding a wooden hand.”
“Your partner was that fine-looking gentleman from Hesse? Did he not tell you that he adored blue eyes and fair hair, and that he would make you a baroness, if you would go home with him, if you would wickedly run away?”
“White Angel, make me a baroness!”
The evening of that day a young peasant came and asked Louisa’s mother for her daughter’s hand. The mother said, Yes.
“White Angel, deliver me from this poor man. I want to be a baroness!”
The mother, who was a sensible woman, and a widow, had good sense enough and energy enough for two. The White Angel did not appear again, and Louisa married the peasant—and she kept on turning the spindle.
One day her husband, who was a hard-working man, had over-exerted himself and was taken ill. In the meanwhile Louisa had seen her handsome gentleman again.
“White Angel,” she said, “he loves me still. He has sworn he would marry me if I were a widow.” She dared not say more. The husband recovered from his illness. The White Angel still turned a deaf ear to her wishes. She lost all hope of ever becoming a baroness.
Later her husband became more successful, so that his work alone supplied all their wants. Two beautiful children had come to gladden their lives, and now, when Louisa worked at the spindle, it felt quite soft in her fingers.
One evening, when she was only half asleep, the white figure appeared once more, and a gentle voice whispered in her ear this story:
“A little fish was merrily swimming about in the water and looking seriously at a pretty blackcap which first circled around and around in the air, and then alighted on a branch of a willow which grew close to the bank of the river.
“‘Oh,’ said the little fish, ‘how happy that bird is! It can rise up to the heavens and go high up to the sun to warm itself in its rays. Why cannot I do the same?’
“The blackcap, who was looking down at the fish, thought to himself:
“‘Oh! how happy that fish is! The element in which it lives furnishes it at the same time with food; it has nothing to do but to glide along. How I should like to sport in the fresh, transparent water!’”
“At that moment a kite pounced upon the poor little fish, while a scamp of a schoolboy threw a stone at the bird; the blackcap fell into the water—the fresh, transparent water—and for a moment struggled in it before it died, while the little fish, carried aloft, could go up on high to the sun and warm itself in its rays. Their wishes had been granted.”