But Frida only laughed at these lamentations. "Why, what nonsense you speak!" she said. "It is only for a little while that I am going away. I hope to come back in about three months. And many of you can now read the Bible for yourselves. And as to the grand gentleman, that is all fancy; I want no grand gentleman for a husband. The only thing that would detain me in England would be if any of my relations were to find me out and claim me; but if that were to be the case, I am sure none of my friends in the Forest would grudge their child to her own people, and they may be assured she would never forget them, and would not be long in revisiting them."
"Ach! if the child were to find her own friends, her father or her mother's people, that would be altogether a different matter," they said simultaneously. "We would then say, 'Stay, woodland child, and be happy with those who have a right to you; but oh, remember the poor wood-cutters and workers in the Forest, who will weary for a sight of the face of the fair girl found by one of them in the Black Forest.'"
Very hearty was the welcome which awaited Frida at Stanford Hall. Ada received her with open arms.
"Ah, Frida, how glad I am to see you once again; and how good of you to give up the pleasure of a month in London to come to see and comfort us!—You will see how quickly I will get well now, mother.—And erelong, Frida, we shall take you to London ourselves, and father will show you all the wonders there."
Frida answered merrily, but she felt much shocked to see how delicate-looking Ada had become.
The girls had much to tell each other of all that had happened since last they met; and when dinner was over, and Frida went to see Ada as she lay on her couch in her prettily-fitted-up boudoir, Ada roused herself to have, as she said, "a right down delightful chat."
"See, Frida, here is a charming easy-chair for you; please bring it quite close to my couch, and now tell me all about your Forest friends. How are Elsie and Wilhelm, and their little Gretchen and Hans? But, indeed, I believe I know more about them than you do; for only two days ago my father received a letter from Hans's music-teacher in Leipsic, giving him unqualified praise, and predicting a successful musical career for him."
"Oh, I am glad!" said Frida. "How pleased his parents will be, and how grateful to Sir Richard Stanford for all he has done for him!"
And so in pleasant talk the evening of the first day of Frida's visit to Stanford Hall drew to a close. As time passed on, Ada's health rapidly improved, and together the girls went about the beautiful grounds belonging to the Hall—Ada at first drawn in an invalid chair, and Frida walking by her side. But by-and-by Ada was able to walk, and together the girls visited in some of the cottages near the Hall—Frida finding out that Ada in her English home was conveying comfort and blessing to many weary souls by reading to them from her English Bible the words of life, even as she had done from her German one in the huts of the wood-cutters, carters, and charcoal-burners in the Black Forest.
"Have you heard, Ada," said Lady Stanford one morning at breakfast, "that the old woman who has lately come to the pretty picturesque cottage at the Glen is very ill? I wish you and Frida would go and see her, and take her some beef-tea and jelly which the housekeeper will give you. I understand she requires nourishing food; and try and discover if there is anything else she requires."