[Illustration]
All day long the little boy worked hard, in field and barn and shed,
for his people were poor farmers, and could not pay a workman; but at
sunset there came an hour that was all his own, for his father had
given it to him. Then the boy would go up to the top of a hill and
look across at another hill that rose some miles away. On this far
hill stood a house with windows of clear gold and diamonds. They shone
and blazed so that it made the boy wink to look at them; but after a
while the people in the house put up shutters, as it seemed, and then
it looked like any common farm-house. The boy supposed they did this
because it was supper-time; and then he would go into the house and
have his supper of bread and milk and so to bed.
One day the boy’s father called him and said: “You have been a good
boy, and have earned a holiday. Take this day for your own; but
remember that God gave it, and try to learn some good thing.”
The boy thanked his father and kissed his mother; then he put a piece
of bread in his pocket, and set out to find the house with the golden
windows.
It was pleasant walking. His bare feet made marks in the white dust,
and when he looked back, the footprints seemed to be following him, and
making company for him. His shadow, too, kept beside him, and would
dance or run with him as he pleased; so it was very cheerful. By and
by he felt hungry; and he sat down by a brown brook that ran through
the alder hedge by the roadside, and ate his bread, and drank the clear
water. Then he scattered the crumbs for the birds, as his mother had
taught him to do, and went on his way.
After a long time he came to a high green hill; and when he had climbed
the hill, there was the house on the top; but it seemed that the
shutters were up, for he could not see the golden windows. He came up
to the house, and then he could well have wept, for the windows were of
clear glass, like any others, and there was no gold anywhere about them.
A woman came to the door, and looked kindly at the boy, and asked him
what he wanted.
“I saw the golden windows from our hilltop,” he said, “and I came to
see them, but now they are only glass.”
The woman shook her head and laughed.
“We are poor farming people,” she said, “and are not likely to have
gold about our windows; but glass is better to see through.”
She told the boy to sit down on the broad stone step at the door, and
brought him a cup of milk and a cake, and bade him rest; then she
called her daughter, a child of his own age, and nodded kindly at the
two, and went back to her work.
The little girl was barefooted like himself, and wore a brown cotton
gown, but her hair was golden like the windows he had seen, and her
eyes were blue like the sky at noon. She led the boy about the farm,
and showed him her black calf with the white star on its forehead, and
he told her about his own at home, which was red like a chestnut, with
four white feet. Then when they had eaten an apple together, and so had
become friends, the boy asked her about the golden windows. The little
girl nodded, and said she knew all about them, only he had mistaken the
house.
“You have come quite the wrong way!” she said. “Come with me, and I
shall show you the house with the golden windows, and then you will see
for yourself.”
They went to a knoll that rose behind the farm-house, and as they went
the little girl told him that the golden windows could be seen only at
a certain hour, about sunset.
“Yes, I know that!” said the boy.
When they reached the top of the knoll, the girl turned and pointed;
and there on a hill far away stood a house with windows of clear gold
and diamond, just as he had seen them. And when they looked again, the
boy saw that it was his own home.
Then he told the little girl that he must go. He promised to come
again, but he did not tell her what he had learned; and so he went
back down the hill, and the little girl stood in the sunset light and
watched him.
The way home was long, and it was dark before the boy reached his
father’s house; but the lamplight and firelight shone through the
windows, making them almost as bright as he had seen them from the
hilltop; and when he opened the door, his mother came to kiss him, and
his little sister ran to throw her arms about his neck, and his father
looked up and smiled from his seat by the fire.
“Have you had a good day?” asked his mother.
Yes, the boy had had a very good day.
“And have you learned anything?” asked his father.
“Yes,” said the boy. “I have learned that our house has windows of gold
and diamond.”
--LAURA E. RICHARDS.
_From “The Golden Windows,” by permission of Little, Brown & Company._