Rico and Wiseli | Page 8

better for you to stay at home, Rico. Look! it is

beautiful here at home, I am sure."
The lad sat thoughtfully silent for a long time, leaning his head on his
hand, and his eyebrows brought in a close line down over his eyes. At
last he turned again to Stineli, who had been gathering the soft green
moss that grew around the spot where they were lying, and of which
she made a tiny bed with two pillows and a coverlet. She meant to
carry them home to the sick Urschli.
"You say I had better stay at home, Stineli; but, do you know, it is just
as if I did not know where my home really is."
"Oh, dear me! what do you mean?" cried the girl; and in her surprise
she threw away a whole handful of moss. Your home is here, of course.
It is always home where father and mother"--She stopped suddenly.
Rico had no mother, and his father had been away now for a very long
time; and the cousin? Stineli never went near that cousin, who had
never spoken one pleasant word to her. The child did not know what to
say, but it was not natural to her to remain long in uncertainty. Rico had
already fallen into one of his reveries, when she grasped him by the
arm, and said,--
"I should just like to know something; that is, the name of the lake
where it is so lovely."
Rico pondered. "I do not know," he said; and felt very much surprised
himself as he spoke.
Now Stineli proposed that they should ask somebody what it was called;
for even if Rico had ever so much money, and was able to travel, he
must know how to inquire the way, and what the name of the lake was.
They began at once to think of whom they should inquire,--of the
teacher, or of the grandmother.
At last it occurred to Rico that his father would know better than
anybody else, and he thought he would certainly ask him when he came
home again.
The time had slipped away quickly as they sat talking, and presently
the children heard the distant sound of a bell. They recognized the
sound. It was the bell for prayers.
They sprang up quickly, and ran off, hand in hand, down the hill-side
through bushes, and through the snow across the meadow; and it had
scarcely stopped ringing when they reached the door where the
grandmother was on the lookout for them.

Stineli had to go at once into the house, and her grandmother said
quickly, "Go home directly, Rico, and do not hang around the door any
longer."
The grandmother had never said such a thing to him before, although
he had always been in the habit of hanging around the door; for he was
never in haste to go home, and stood always for a while before he could
make up his mind to enter. He obeyed at once, however, and went into
the house.

CHAPTER V
.
A SAD HOUSE, BUT THE LAKE GETS A NAME.
Rico did not find his cousin in the sitting-room; so he went to the
kitchen, and opened the door. There she stood; but before he could
enter, she raised her finger, saying, "Sch! sch! Do not open and shut the
doors, and make a noise, as if there were four of you. Go into the other
room, and keep still. Your father is lying in the bedroom up there. They
brought him home in a wagon: he is sick."
Rico went into the room, seated himself on a bench, and did not stir.
He sat there for at least a half-hour. Presently he heard the cousin
moving about in the kitchen. Then he thought that he would go up very
softly, and peep into the bedroom. Perhaps his father would like
something to eat: it was long past the meal-time.
He slipped behind the stove, mounted the little steps, and went very
softly into the bedroom. After a while he returned, went at once into the
kitchen, approached quite close to his cousin, and said softly,--
"Cousin, come up."
The woman was about to strike him angrily, when she happened to
glance at his face. He was perfectly colorless,--cheeks and lips as white
as a sheet, and his eyes looked so black that the cousin was almost
afraid of him.
"What is the matter with you?" she asked hastily, and followed him
almost involuntarily.
He mounted the little steps softly, and entered the chamber. His father
lay on the bed with staring, wide-open eyes,--he was dead.
"Oh, my God!" screamed the cousin, and ran crying out of the door that

opened upon the passage on the other side of