"The swan!" she cried, "the swan! that is the story of the Ugly Duckling!" She hastily took the book out of Angelika's hands and turned over the leaves. Gradually the fairy figures of the snow-queen, the little mermaid, and the rest, obliterated the horrible image of her dead father, and his narrow grave faded away to give place to the shining garden of Paradise, and the clear, broad sea with the fairy palaces beneath its crystal waves. Her sobs grew fainter and fainter, and at last a smile played around her lips when she came to the story of the dryad "Elder Blossom."
"Now I know what a dryad is," she said. "I am glad, I am very glad!"
"What is it that makes you so glad?"
"That a dryad is nothing bad, for--don't you know?--he called me that. I thought it was to mock me, and it hurt me, but it was not so."
"He? who?"
"I don't know his name, your brother, who gave me the book."
"Johannes?" laughed Angelika. "Do you like him?"
"Yes, oh, yes, he is so handsome and good, just like the prince in the Little Mermaid." With these words a light shone in the child's dark eyes. "I would far rather have turned into foam than done anything to hurt him, if I had been the mermaid."
"That is charming! that is splendid!" Angelika declared with delight; "we both love him! He is such a dear brother. It is a pity he has gone away. If he were at home he would come and play with you; oh, he plays so finely!"
"Has he gone away?" asked Ernestine sadly.