“And it is your home as well as mine,” continued Fritz. “I came back on purpose to fetch you. Oh! if Grandfather had but lived to see the day! Max shall work on the farm with me; and before he knows it he will have earned one of his own. And you, my fairy, shall keep house for us both in true German fashion; and we will all be so happy! What do you say, Liebchen? Shall it be so? Will you and Max come with me?”
Ah! wouldn’t they? Here was a Christmas gift indeed,—a home, a brother! Did ever mortal tree bear so fine a present before? They embraced Fritz over and over again, Thekla promising between her kisses to be such a housewife,—so orderly, so busy! Sauer-kraut he should never be without, nor cabbage soup, nor any thing else that was nice. And just then something droll happened which Fritz did not see, but the children did. The door opened gently a little way, and through the crack appeared the head of December, nodding and winking above the fallen fir-bough, and beaming with smiles. He pointed to Fritz’s back and then to the tree, with an “I told you so” air, noiselessly clapped his hands, and withdrew, just as Fritz shivered, and said, “Bless me, the wind has blown the door open!”
One week later a large ship weighed anchor in a port, and upon her deck stood our two children and their new brother. There was no one to see them go. All their few farewells had been spoken in the distant village and beside Grandfather’s grave. But as the heavy cables swung and heaved, and the vessel, released from bondage, moved slowly from the harbor, upon the slope of a snow-covered hill beneath which she passed, amid the nodding pines which crowned the top, a group of figures suddenly appeared. They were the twelve Months come to wave farewell to the children. There was January, disdainful as ever; sweet, rosy June; February, his honest nose reddened by the keen wind; May and April, clasping each other’s waists like a pair of school-girls. When they saw Max and Thekla on the deck, a little chorus of laughter, exclamation, and “Good-bys” could be heard. Thekla caught the sound of March’s wild “Ha! ha!” the rich voice of September; April’s gleeful laugh, as she flung a handful of violets at the ship, and her sob when they fell, as of course they did, into the water, and were borne out to sea. A moment,—no more. The children had time for only one glad smile of recognition, before the vision vanished and was gone. And no one else on the deck observed any thing but the sun dancing on the snow, the dark evergreens, and a few tossing leaves of bright color which still clung to the bare boughs of an oak-tree.
“Dear, dear Months,—how good they have been to us!” whispered Thekla, as the hill faded from view.
And the ship spread her white wings, and sailed away to the New World.
“One week later a large ship weighed anchor in a port, and upon her deck stood our two children,” Max and Thekla.
Cambridge: Press of John Wilson & Son.