Project Gutenberg's Stories By English Authors: Germany, by Various

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Title: Stories By English Authors: Germany

Author: Various

Release Date: March 25, 2006 [EBook #2071]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STORIES BY ENGLISH AUTHORS: ***

Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers

STORIES BY ENGLISH AUTHORS

GERMANY AND NORTHERN EUROPE

CONTENTS

THE BIRD ON ITS JOURNEY, Beatrice Harraden
KOOSJE: A STUDY OF DUTCH LIFE, John Strange Winter
A DOG OF FLANDERS, Ouida
MARKHEIM, R. L. Stevenson
QUEEN TITA'S WAGER, William Black

THE BIRD ON ITS JOURNEY, By Beatrice Harraden

It was about four in the afternoon when a young girl came into the salon
of the little hotel at C---- in Switzerland, and drew her chair up to
the fire.

"You are soaked through," said an elderly lady, who was herself trying
to get roasted. "You ought to lose no time in changing your clothes."

"I have not anything to change," said the young girl, laughing. "Oh, I
shall soon be dry!"

"Have you lost all your luggage?" asked the lady, sympathetically.

"No," said the young girl; "I had none to lose." And she smiled a little
mischievously, as though she knew by instinct that her companion's
sympathy would at once degenerate into suspicion!

"I don't mean to say that I have not a knapsack," she added,
considerately. "I have walked a long distance--in fact, from Z----."

"And where did you leave your companions?" asked the lady, with a touch
of forgiveness in her voice.

"I am without companions, just as I am without luggage," laughed the
girl.

And then she opened the piano, and struck a few notes. There was
something caressing in the way in which she touched the keys; whoever
she was, she knew how to make sweet music; sad music, too, full of that
undefinable longing, like the holding out of one's arms to one's friends
in the hopeless distance.

The lady bending over the fire looked up at the little girl, and forgot
that she had brought neither friends nor luggage with her. She hesitated
for one moment, and then she took the c