“This is one of your dark days, as you call them,” said Ada, reproachfully; “and you mean to make it one of mine, too, and I was so happy.”
“This, perhaps, is another of my gifts,” said she, with a mocking laugh, “and yet I was brought here to make you merry and light-hearted! Yes, dear, I overheard Mr. Grenfell tell your papa that his plan was a mistake, and that all ‘low-bred ones’—that was the name he gave us—lost the little spirit they had when you fed them, and only grew lazy.”
“Oh, Kate, for shame!”
“The shame is not mine; it was he said it.”
“How sad you make me by saying these things.”
“Well, but we must own, Ada, he was right! I was—no, I won’t say happier, but fifty times as merry and light-hearted before I came here; and though gathering brushwood isn’t as picturesque as making a bouquet, I am almost sure I sang over the one, and only sighed over the other.”
Ada turned away her head and wiped the tears from her cheeks.
“Isn’t it a hopeful thing to try and make people happy?”
“But papa surely wished, and he believed that you would be happy,” said Ada, with something almost reproachful in her manner.
“All because he hadn’t read that little German fable of the Two Fairies—the one who always did something and failed, and the other who always promised and promised; watering the little plant of Hope, as he calls it, and making believe that the fruit would be, one day, so sweet and so luscious as no lips had ever tasted before. And it’s strange, Ada,” added she, in a graver tone—“it’s strange, but when I was out upon the mountains watching the goats, rambling all day alone in the deep heather, how I used to think and think! O dear! what wonderful things did I not think would one day come to pass—how rich I should be, how great, and, best of all, how beautiful! How kings and great people would flatter me, and make me grand presents; and how haughty I should be to some, and how gracious to others—perhaps very humble people; and how I’d amaze every one with all I knew, and they’d say, ‘Where did she learn this? How did she ever come to know that?’”