"Armes Kind" (poor child), she said, soothing her as tenderly as she would have done her own blind Anna, had she been alive and in trouble, "I understand it all, dear." (And her kind woman heart had taken it all in.) "It is just like the little bird taken from its mother's nest, and put into a strange one, longing to be back amongst its like again, and content nowhere else. But, Frida, dost thou not remember that we read in the little brown book that our Lord hath said, 'Lo, I am with you alway'? Isn't that enough for you? No place can be very desolate, can it, if He be there?"
In a moment after Elsie said these words, Frida raised her head and dried her eyes.
Had she been forgetting, she asked herself, whose young servant she was? Was it right in a child of God to be discontented with her lot, and to forget the high privilege that God had given her in allowing her to read His Word to the poor people in the Forest?
"I must throw off this discontented spirit," she said to herself; and turning to Elsie she told her how sorry she was for the way in which she had acted, adding, "But with God's help I will be better now."
Frida was no perfect character, and, truth to tell, ever since her return from Baden-Baden, a sense of the incongruity of her circumstances had crept upon her. The tasteful surroundings, the cultured conversation, the musical evenings, the refinement of all around, had enchanted the young girl, and the humble lot and homely ways of her Forest friends had on her return to them stood out in striking contrast. And, alas! for the time being she refused to see in all these things the guiding hand of God. But after the day we have written of, things went better. The girl strove to conquer her discontent, and in God's strength she overcame, and her friends in the Forest had once more the pleasure of seeing her bright smile and hearing her sweet voice in song.
Johann Schmidt had fallen asleep in Jesus with the words of Holy Scripture on his lips, blessing the "wood-cutters' pet," as he called her, for having, through the reading of God's Word, led him to Jesus. But though sickness had left the Forest, the severe cold and deep snow were very trying to the health of all the dwellers in it, and the winter nights were long and dreary.
One day in December, Wilhelm Hörstel had business in Dringenstadt, and on his return home he gave Frida two letters which he had found lying at the post-office for her. They proved, to Frida's great delight, to be from her two friends Miss Drechsler and Adeline Stanford.
Miss Drechsler's ran thus:—
"Dear Frida,—I have been thinking very specially of you and your friends in the Forest, now that the cold winter days have come, and the snow, I doubt not, is lying thick on the trees and ground. Knowing how interested you are, dear, in all your kind friends there, I have thought how nice it would be for you, if Elsie and Wilhelm consent, to have a Christmas-tree for a few of your friends; and in order to carry this out, I enclose a money order to the amount of £2, and leave it to you and Elsie to spend it to the best of your power.
"I am also going to write to Herr Steiger to send, addressed to you, ten pounds of tea, which I trust you to give from me to each of the householders—nine in number, I think—in the little Dorf, retaining one for your friends the Hörstels. Will you, dear Frida, be my almoner and do my business for me? I often think of and pray for you, and I know you do not forget me. I fear I will not be able to return to Dringenstadt till the month of May, as my sister is still very ill, and I feel I am of use to her.—Your affectionate friend.
M. Drechsler."
"Oh, isn't it good? isn't it charming?" said Frida, jumping about the room in her glee. "Mayn't we have the tree, Mutter? And will you not some day soon come with me to Dringenstadt and choose the things for it? Oh, I wish Hans were here, that I might tell him all about it! See, I have not yet opened Adeline's letter; it is so long since I heard from her. I wonder where they are living now. Oh, the letter is from Rome."