"Well, would you like me to try and repeat Mrs. Schwartz's story as she has told it to me?" said our governess. "I must let you know, however, that she and I are very old friends, for I have been to see her over and over again, and she and her children have been here to tea several times in the holidays, her husband fetching them home in the evening. I was selfish in that, for I wanted to refresh my own ear with the German accent, and they both speak well, particularly the master cooper, who like most of his countrymen was a true journeyman, and travelled all over the country to practise his trade before he was drafted off to the army to fight in the Franco-German War."
"Oh tell us the Schwartz love story!" said Sarah Jorring, "and try to tell it just as you heard it; it would be so much more sentimental."
"But not in German," we cried, "that wouldn't be fair, to give us a German exercise under the pretence of a story; we'll have it in English."
"Well, you shall have it in something like the original German-English, which seems to me very much to resemble real old English, and sounds to my ear more simple and more fit for story-telling than the more modern tongue. You must try to picture to yourselves Mrs. Schwartz when she was younger and paler, and wore a round white cap and great silver ear-rings, and was in fact a slender, rather pale pretty girl with a plaintive look in her great blue eyes, and a voice soft and low. The story arose from our talking about the fashion of Christmas-trees having been adopted in England, and the recollection of the last Christmas-tree that she had seen at her old home with her former mistress caused her to say with a deep sigh, 'Ach! Ich habe gelebt und geliebet;' so I will call the story 'I have lived and loved,' and you must try to fancy that Mrs. Schwartz is speaking."
CHAPTER VI.
"I HAVE LIVED AND LOVED."
