carried her wood into the house.
"Jan said the stork was God's bird," observed little Carl.
"That's it," said Annchen, brightening. "God's bird; and the good God
may let the stork bring us good fortune. Dear storkie, do! If only you
would!"
Mamma Stork looked solemnly down on the children, and wagged her head
gravely up and down. Annchen thought it was in answer to her appeal.
"See, Fritz! see, Carl! She says she will!" The stork kept on nodding,
and Annchen went in to supper, feeling happy.
Days grew into weeks, and spring into full summer. The big eggs and the
little eggs had in turn cracked and given place to young birds, who sat
in the nests clamoring for food, and being fed, caressed, and kept warm
by their mothers. At first the nestlings were ugly, featherless
creatures, and seemed all beaks and appetites; but presently they began
to grow, to put out plumage, and become round and fat. Soon they could
hop; then they could flutter their wings; the air was full of their
calls and their swift-moving bodies. Mother Stork's babies were white
like herself, and had long legs and big bills. The swallow thought them
awkward, and contrasted them proudly with her own brisk, glancing brood;
but in Mother Stork's eyes they were perfect in every way, and graceful
as birds should be. The dove thought the same of her plump squabs,--each
parent was entirely satisfied with the kind of child which the Lord had
sent her; and that was a happy thing, was it not?
Summer was over, and now it was September, but Annchen had not ceased to
hope for the good fortune which the stork's coming prophesied. Each
morning, when she woke, she ran to the window to see if the lucky birds
were still in the nest. There they were, but nothing else happened, and
the mother worked harder than ever, and the black loaf grew smaller.
Still Annchen hoped.
"Do you notice what a kind bird the stork is?" said the mother one
night, as she was putting the children to bed. "She never gets tired of
taking care of her babies, nor beats them with her wings, nor scolds
them. Do you not love her for being so amiable?"
"Sometimes the babies scold her," remarked Fritz from his corner.
"I don't think that is scolding. What they say is, 'Mother, we are
hungry. We want a fish or a couple of young frogs; when will the father
bring them?' The little storks do not like to wait for their dinners any
more than you children do. I heard once a story about a good Mother
Stork. Shall I tell it you?"
"Oh, yes!" cried the children; but the mother went first for her
knitting-work, for even at the twilight hour she dared not let her
fingers be idle for a moment.
"Once there was a Frau Stork," she began, "who built a nest in the roof
of an old shed, and in it laid three blue eggs. Presently out of the
eggs came three baby storks, large and hungry. Then was Frau Stork very
proud and glad. All day she sat in the nest, keeping her little ones
warm under her feathers, while Papa Stork flew to and fro, seeking
places where were ponds with fish and frogs; and these he fetched home
in his beak, and with them fed his brood, who sat always with open
mouths ready for anything good which should come along.
"One day when Papa Stork was absent, and Mother Stork had hopped from
the nest to the roof, she heard a crackling sound which she did not at
all understand. Then the air grew thick and smoky, and there was a smell
of burning wood. The shed was on fire! Frau Stork became uneasy, and
called loudly for her mate, but he was too far away to hear her voice.
Presently the smoke became more dense, and a little red tongue of flame
crept through the thatch. When it felt the air it grew large, swelled,
and at last, like a fiery serpent, darted at the nest and the screaming
brood within."
"Oh dear! oh dear!" cried the children, sitting up in their beds. "What
_did_ the poor stork do?"
"She could easily have flown away, you know," continued the mother.
"There were her strong wings, which would have borne her faster than the
fire could follow. But she loved her babies too well to leave them like
that. She seized them with her beak, and tried to drag them from the
nest. But they were too heavy, and flapped and struggled, hindering her,
for they did not understand what she wished to do. The flames drew
nearer, the branches began to blaze. Then Mother Stork took her usual
place in the nest, gathered her brood under her wings as if to shield
them, bent her poor head, and--"
"Oh, she didn't burn up!--please don't say she did!" interrupted
Annchen.
"Yes. When Papa Stork came from the pond with a fresh fish in his beak,
there was no roof there, no nest, no little storks,--only a heap of
ashes and curling smoke. Frau Stork loved her children too well to
desert them, and they all died together."
There was silence for a minute or two. Annchen was sobbing softly, and a
suspicious sniff was heard from the direction of Fritz's pillow.
"I hope _our_ stork won't burn up," said Carl, solemnly.
"Yes,--because then she won't bring us good luck, you know," added
Fritz.
"Do you think the stork has forgotten?" whispered Annchen to her mother.
"I've waited and waited for her so long that I'm tired. Do they forget
sometimes?"
"She will have to bestir herself if she is to do anything for us this
year," said the mother; and though her heart was heavy enough just then,
she smiled into Annchen's eager eyes. "Autumn is here; the winter will
come before long. Frau Stork and her family may fly off any day."
"I shall _have_ to remind her," murmured Annchen, sleepily.
She remembered this resolution next morning, and went out into the yard.
The day was chilly; the blue sky, all dappled with gray, looked as if a
storm were coming. Mother Stork was alone on the roof. Her young ones
could fly now, and they and their father were off somewhere together.
"Mother Stork," said Annchen, standing close to the wall, and speaking
in a loud, confidential whisper, "you won't forget what you promised,
will you--that day when you nodded your head, you know? The mother says
you will fly away soon, but please bring us our good luck first. Poor
mother works so hard and looks so pale, and sometimes there is almost no
dinner at all, and the cold winter is coming, and I don't know what we
shall do, if you don't help us. Please do, Mother Stork. We can't wait
till you come again, it's such a long time. Pray fetch our good luck
before you go."
Mother Stork, perched on one leg on the roof's edge, nodded her head up
and down, as if considering the point. Then she rose on her large wings
and flew away. Annchen marked her course through the air, and her eyes
grew large and eager with delight.
"She has gone to the fen!" she cried. "That's where she keeps it. Oh,
the dear stork!"
"What is it? Who has gone where?" asked the boys, running into the yard.
"Frau Stork," explained Annchen. "I reminded her about it,--our good
luck, you know,--and she flew straight off to fetch it. She went to the
fen, the beautiful fen, where I went once with the father--_such_ a
place! How I should like to go there again! You never saw such a place,
boys!"
"I want to go to the fen too," said Carl.
"I wonder if we might!" went on Annchen, thoughtfully. "It isn't so very
far. I didn't get tired at all that day when I went before. And we could
help Frau Stork, perhaps. I wonder if we might."
"I'll go in and ask the mother," said Fritz, running to the door with an
eager demand: "Mother, may we go for a walk,--Annchen and Carl and I?"
The mother, who was very busy, nodded.
"Don't go too far," she called after him.
"Mother says we may," shouted Fritz, as he ran again into the yard; and
the children, overjoyed, set forth at once.
It was quite a distance to the fen, but the road was a plain one, and
Annchen had no difficulty in following it. When she went there before,
not only her father had been along, but Ernst the wood-cutter, with his
donkey; so, when tired, she had rested herself by riding on top of the
fagots. She was three years older now, and the sturdy lads did not mind
the distance at all, but ran forward merrily, encouraging each other to
make haste.
The sun had broken through the clouds, and shone hotly on the white
road. But as they neared the fen, they passed into shade. Softly they
lifted the drooping branches of the trees, and entered, moving
carefully, that they might not disturb the stork. A little farther, and
the ground grew wet under foot. Bright streams of water appeared here
and there. But between the streams were ridges and island-like tufts of
moss and dried grasses, and stepping from one of these to the other, the
little ones passed on, dry-shod. Tall reeds and lance-shaped rushes rose
above their heads as they crept along, whispering low to each other.
The air was hushed and warm, there was a pleasant fragrance of damp
roots and leaves. The children liked the fen extremely. Their feet
danced and skipped, and they would gladly have shouted, had it not been
for the need of keeping quiet.
Suddenly a beautiful glossy water-rat, with a long tail, glanced like a
ray of quick sunshine from under a bank, and at sight of the intruders
flashed back again into his hole. Fritz was enchanted at this sight. He
longed to stay and dig into the bank in search of the rat. What fun it
would be to take him home and tame him! But Annchen whispered
imploringly, and Carl tugged at his fingers; so at last he gave up
searching for the rat, and went on with the others. They were near the
middle of the fen now, and Mother Stork, they thought, must be close at
hand.
Pop! glug! An enormous bull-frog leaped from a log, and vanished into
the pool with a splash. Next a couple of lovely water-flies, with blue,
shining bodies and gauze-like wings, appeared hovering in the air. They
rose and sank and circled and whirled like enchanted things; the
children, who had never seen such flies before, felt as if they had met
the first chapter of a fairy-story, and stood holding their breaths,
lest the pretty creatures should take alarm and fly away. It was not
till the water-flies suddenly whirled off and disappeared, that they
recollected their errand, and moved on.
All at once Annchen, who was in advance of the rest, stopped short and
uttered an exclamation. The parting of the reeds had shown her a pool
larger than any they had seen before, round which grew a fringe of tall
flowering water-plants. Half in, half out of the pool, lay a black log
with a hollow end, and beside it, dabbling with her beak as if searching
for something, stood a large white bird. At the sound of voices and
rustling feet, the bird spread a pair of broad wings and flew slowly
upward, turning her head to look at the children as she went.
"It _was_," cried Annchen. "Oh, Mother Stork, we didn't mean to frighten
you. Please come back again. We'll go away at once if you don't like to
have us here."
But Mother Stork was no longer visible. She had dropped into some
distant part of the fen--where, the children could not see.
"Her eyes looked angry," said little Carl.
"Oh dear!" sighed Annchen. "I hope she isn't angry. That _would_ be
dreadful! What will poor mother do if she is? And it would be all our
fault."
"I want to go home," whined Carl. "It's dinner-time. I want my dinner
very much."
All of them wanted to go home, but it was not an easy or quick task to
do so. The children had wandered farther than they knew. It took a long
time to find their way out of the fen, and when at last they reached the
rushy limits, and stood on open ground, it was an unfamiliar place, and
much farther from home than the side where they had entered. Weary,
hungry, and disheartened, they trudged along for what to them seemed
hours, and it was long past midday when at last they reached the
familiar gate.
Frau Stork had got there before them, and stood on the roof beside her
mate, gazing down as the sorry little procession filed beneath. Annchen
had no heart to greet her as she passed. She was tired, and a dread lest
their long absence should have frightened or angered the mother added
weight to her fatigue, and made her heart sink heavily as they opened
the door.
The mother did not start or run forward to meet them as the children
expected she would do. She sat by the table, and some one sat opposite
her--a tall, stately officer in uniform, with an order on his breast.
His helmet lay on the table, with some papers scattered about it. When
the children came in, he turned and looked at them out of a pair of kind
blue eyes.
"Ah," he said. "These are the little ones, dame?"
"Yes," said the mother, "these are _his_ children. Take off your hats,
boys; and, Annchen, make your reverence. This is the Herr Baron, your
father's captain, children."
[Illustration: The Captain lifted Fritz and perched him on his
knee.--PAGE 296.]
Carl stared with round eyes at the splendid Herr Baron, while Annchen
demurely dropped her courtesy. The captain lifted Fritz and perched him
on his knee.
"My fine fellow," he said, "you have your father's face,"--and he
stroked Fritz's yellow hair, while Fritz played with the bright buttons
of the uniform. The captain and the mother went on talking. Annchen did
not understand all they said, but she saw that her mother looked happier
than for a long time before, and that made her feel happy too.
At last the captain rose to go. He kissed the children, and Annchen saw
him put a purse into her mother's hands.
"I take shame to myself that I left you so long without aid," he said;
"but keep up heart, dame. Your pension will no doubt be granted you,
and I will see that you and the children are cared for, as a brave man's
family should be. So good-day, and God bless you!"
"May He bless you, Herr Baron," sobbed the widow, as he went away.
"What is it, mother,--why do you cry?" asked little Carl at last,
pulling her sleeve.
"For joy, dear. The good Baron has brought your father's back pay. I can
discharge my debts now, and you need hunger no more."
"It is the good luck come at last. I knew it would," said Annchen.
"We will thank God for it," said her mother. And they all knelt down and
repeated "Our Father," that beautiful prayer which suits equally our
time of joy and our time of sorrow.
But when the prayer was said, and the mother, smiling through her tears,
was bustling about to cook such a supper as the little family had not
tasted for many a day, dear, superstitious little Annchen stole softly
to the door and went into the yard.
The young storks were asleep with their heads under their wings, and
Frau Stork, poised on one leg, was gazing about with drowsy eyes. She
looked bigger than ever against the dim evening sky.
"Thank you, dear stork!" said Annchen.
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Transcriber's Notes:
Varied hyphenation has been retained as in now-a-days and nowadays.
Page 300, period added (of Mother Goose. With)