u there in my new landau. I
really think, Cousin Louise, that Oestanvik would please you: the
peaches and the vines are just now in full bloom; it is a beautiful
sight.

A deep sigh is heard.

She. Who sighs so?

A Voice. Somebody who is poor, and who now, for the first time, envies
the rich.

He. Oh rich! rich! God forbid! rich I am not exactly. One has one's
competency, thank God! One has wherewith to live. I can honestly
maintain myself and a family. I sow two hundred bushels of wheat; and
what do you think, Cousin Louise--but where is Cousin Louise?

A Voice. It seemed to her, no doubt, as if a cold wind came over here
from Oestanvik.

At the moment when the gentlemen returned to the room, a girl came into
the balcony. She was alone. The misfortunes of the evening depressed her
heart, and were felt to be so much more humiliating because they were of
such a mean kind. Some burning tears stole quickly and silently over her
cheeks. The evening wind kissed them gently away. She looked up to
heaven; never had it seemed to her so high and glorious. Her soul raised
itself, mounted even higher than her glance, up to the mighty friend of
human hearts; and He gave to hers a presentiment that a time would come,
when, in his love, she would be reconciled to and forget all adversities
of earth.

* * * * *

The days at Axelholm wore on merrily amid ever-varying delights. Petrea
wrote long letters, in prose and in verse, to her sisters at home, and
imparted to them all that occurred here. Her own misfortunes, which she
even exaggerated, she described in such a comic manner that those very
things which were at first distressing to her, were made a spring of
hearty merriment both to herself and to her family.

She received one day a letter from her father, which contained the
following words:

"My good Child,

"Your letters, my dear child, give me and your sisters great
pleasure; not merely on account of the lively things which they
contain, but more especially on account of your way of bearing
that which is anything but lively. Continue to do thus, my child,
and you--my heart rejoices in the thought--will advance on the way
to wisdom and happiness, and you will have joyfully to acknowledge
the blessed truth which the history of great things, as well as of
small, establishes, that there is nothing evil which may not be
mad