What Sami Sings with the Birds

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What Sami Sings with the Birds

Project Gutenberg's What Sami Sings with the Birds, by Johanna Spyri #8 in our series by Johanna Spyri
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Title: What Sami Sings with the Birds
Author: Johanna Spyri
Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9482] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 5, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT SAMI SINGS WITH THE BIRDS ***

Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and Distributed Proofreaders

WHAT SAMI SINGS WITH THE BIRDS
BY
JOHANNA SPYRI

TRANSLATED BY HELEN B. DOLE
1917
[Illustration: "Up in the ash-trees the birds piped and sang merrily together."]

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
FIRST
OLD MARY ANN
SECOND AT THE GRANDMOTHER'S
THIRD ANOTHER LIFE
FOURTH HARD TIMES
FIFTH THE BIRDS ARE STILL SINGING
SIXTH SAMI SINGS TOO

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
UP IN THE ASH-TREES THE BIRDS PIPED AND SANG MERRILY TOGETHER.
WHERE HAVE YOU COME FROM WITH ALL YOUR HOUSEHOLD GOODS?
SUCH STRAY WAIFS AS YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO DO ANYTHING.

WHAT SAMI SINGS WITH THE BIRDS
CHAPTER FIRST
OLD MARY ANN
For three days the Spring sun had been shining out of a clear sky and casting a gleaming, golden coverlet over the blue waters of Lake Geneva. Storm and rain had ceased. The breeze murmured softly and pleasantly up in the ash-trees, and all around in the green fields the yellow buttercups and snow-white daisies glistened in the bright sunshine. Under the ash-trees, the clear brook was running with the cool mountain water and feeding the gaily nodding primroses and pink anemones on the hillside, as they grew and bloomed down close to the water.
On the low wall by the brook, in the shadow of the ash-trees, an old woman was sitting. She was called "Old Mary Ann" throughout the whole neighborhood. Her big basket, the weight of which had become a little heavy, she had put down beside her. She was on her way back from La Tour, the little old town, with the vine-covered church tower and the ruined castle, the high turrets of which rose far across the blue lake. Old Mary Ann had taken her work there. This consisted in all kinds of mending which did not need to be done particularly well, for the woman was no longer able to do fine work, and never could do it.
Old Mary Ann had had a very changeable life. The place where she now found herself was not her home. The language of the country was not her own. From the shady seat on the low wall, she now looked contentedly at the sunny fields, then across the murmuring brook to the hillside where the big yellow primroses nodded, while the birds piped and sang in the green ash-trees above her, as if they had the greatest festival to celebrate.
"Every Spring, people think it never was so beautiful before, when they have already seen so many," she now said half aloud to herself, and as she gazed at the fields so rich in flowers, many of the past years rose up and passed before her, with all that she had experienced in them.
As a child she had lived far beyond the mountains. She knew so well how it must look over there now at her father's house, which stood in a field among white-blooming pear-trees. Over yonder the large village with its many houses could be seen. It was called Zweisimmen. Everybody called their house the sergeant's house, although her father quite peacefully tilled his fields. But that came from her grandfather. When quite a young fellow, he had gone over the mountains to Lake Geneva and then still farther to Savoy. Under a Duke of Savoy he had taken part in all sorts of military expeditions and had not returned home until he was an old man. He always wore an old uniform and allowed himself to be called sergeant. Then he married and Mary Ann's father was his only child. The old man lived to be a hundred years old, and