“Is there anybody’s life—his biography—that you’d be specially interested in?”
She answered timidly and yet daringly. “Could we—could we read the life of the late Queen Victoria—when she was a girl?”
“Oh, easily! I’ll hunt round for one to-day. Now let me tell you about Hans Andersen. He was born in Denmark, so that he was a Dane. You know where Denmark is on the map, don’t you?”
“I think I do. It’s there by Germany isn’t it?”
“Quite right. But let me get the atlas, and we’ll look it up.”
He was on his feet when she summoned her forces for a question. “Do you read like this to—to the girl you’re engaged to?”
“No,” he said, reddening. “She—she doesn’t like it. She won’t let me. But wait a minute. I’ll go and get the atlas.”
“‘On the same day that he marries another,’ Letty repeated to herself, as she sat alone, ‘your heart will break, and you will drift as sea-foam on the water.’ ‘So let it be,’ said the little mermaid.”