Short Fiction Selma Lagerlöf (best book club books of all time .txt) 📖

a new Anna Stina standing by the fireplace. She stood there, little and broad, with a large, square face, exactly like the other. But why was she so fine, with a white cap with strings tied in a large bow under her chin, and with a black bombazine dress? Ingrid’s head was so confused, that it was some time before it occurred to her that this must be Miss Stafva.

She felt that Anna Stina looked uneasily at her, and she tried to pull herself together and say “Good day.” But the only thing her mind could grasp was the thought that he had come to her.

Inside the kitchen there was a small room, with blue-checked covering on the furniture. They were taken into that room, and Miss Stafva gave them coffee and something to eat.

Anna Stina at once began to talk about their errand. She spoke for a long time; said that she knew her sister stood so high in her ladyship’s favour that she left it to her to engage the servants. Miss Stafva said nothing, but she gave a look at Ingrid as much as to say that it would hardly have been left with her if she had chosen servants like her.

Anna Stina praised Ingrid, and said she was a good girl. She had hitherto served in a parsonage, but now that she was grown up she wanted really to learn something, and that was why Anna Stina had brought her to one who could teach her more than any other person she knew.

Miss Stafva did not reply to this remark either. But her glance plainly showed that she was surprised that anyone who had had a situation in a parsonage had no clothes of her own, but was obliged to borrow old Anna Stina’s.

Then old Anna Stina began to tell how she lived quite alone in the forest, deserted by all her relatives. And this young girl had come running up the hill many an evening and many an early morning to see her. She had therefore thought and hoped that she could now help her to get a good situation.

Miss Stafva said it was a pity that they had gone such a long way to find a place. If she were a clever girl, she could surely get a situation in some good family in their own neighbourhood.

Anna Stina could now clearly see that Ingrid’s prospects were not good, and therefore she began in a more solemn vein:

“Here you have lived, Stafva, and had a good, comfortable home all your life, and I have had to fight my way in great poverty. But I have never asked you for anything before today. And now you will send me away like a beggar, to whom one gives a meal and nothing more.”

Miss Stafva smiled a little; then she said:

“Sister Anna Stina, you are not telling me the truth. I, too, come from Raglanda, and I should like to know at what peasant’s house in that parish grow such eyes and such a face.”

And she pointed at Ingrid, and continued:

“I can quite understand, Anna Stina, that you would like to help one who looks like that. But I do not understand how you can think that your sister Stafva has not more sense than to believe the stories you choose to tell her.”

Anna Stina was so frightened that she could not say a word, but Ingrid made up her mind to confide in Miss Stafva, and began at once to tell her whole story in her soft, beautiful voice.

And Ingrid had hardly told of how she had been lying in the grave, and that a Dalar man had come and saved her, before old Miss Stafva grew red and quickly bent down to hide it. It was only a second, but there must have been some cause for it, for from that moment she looked so kind.

She soon began to ask full particulars about it; more especially she wanted to know about the crazy man, whether Ingrid had not been afraid of him. Oh no, he did no harm. He was not mad, Ingrid said; he could both buy and sell. He was only frightened of some things.

Ingrid thought the hardest of all was to tell what she had heard her adopted mother say. But she told everything, although there were tears in her voice.

Then Miss Stafva went up to her, drew back the handkerchief from her head, and looked into her eyes. Then she patted her lightly on the cheek.

“Never mind that, little miss,” she said. “There is no need for me to know about that. Now sister and Miss Ingrid must excuse me,” she said soon after, “but I must take up her ladyship’s coffee. I shall soon be down again, and you can tell me more.”

When she returned, she said she had told her ladyship about the young girl who had lain in the grave, and now her mistress wanted to see her.

They were taken upstairs, and shown into her ladyship’s boudoir.

Anna Stina remained standing at the door of the fine room. But Ingrid was not shy; she went straight up to the old lady and put out her hand. She had often been shy with others who looked much less aristocratic; but here, in this house, she did not feel embarrassed. She only felt so wonderfully happy that she had come there.

“So it is you, my child, who have been buried,” said her ladyship, nodding friendlily to her. “Do you mind telling me your story, my child? I sit here quite alone, and never hear anything, you know.”

Then Ingrid began again to tell her story. But she had not got very far before she was interrupted. Her ladyship did exactly the same as Miss Stafva had done. She rose, pushed the handkerchief back from Ingrid’s forehead and looked into her eyes.

“Yes,” her ladyship said to herself, “that I can understand. I can understand that he must obey those eyes.”

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