CHAPTER IV

THE DISTANT LAKE WITHOUT A NAME

When Stineli awoke the following morning, she instantly realized that it was Sunday. The grandmother's words of the previous evening were still fresh in her memory, "You deserve the whole afternoon to-morrow, and you shall have it."

After dinner, when Stineli had finished all the necessary duties and was prepared to join Rico, Peter called from his bed, "Stineli, come, stay with me!"

The two others who were ill shouted, "No, no, Stineli, we want you!"

The father said, "I should like to have you go to the barn and take a look at the goat first."

"Hush, everybody!" broke in the grandmother. "Stineli shall go in peace. I will look after these things myself. Remember, dear, that when the vesper bell rings, you are to come home like good children." The grandmother knew that there would be two of them.

Stineli flew away like a bird for whom the door of its cage had been opened, and went directly to Rico, who was waiting as usual. The sun was shining pleasantly, and the heaven was an unbroken blue above them as they crossed the meadow to reach the hill beyond. They still found patches of snow in the shaded places, until they got up where the whole surface had been exposed to the sun; from here they could see the waves beating steadily against the rocks on the shore. They searched for a dry place on a cliff directly over the water, and here they sat down. The wind was blowing a sharp gale at this height; it whistled in their ears and swayed the woods above them like a living mass of green.

"Oh, see, Rico, how beautiful it is here!" exclaimed Stineli as she looked about. "I am so glad that spring has come again. See how the water sparkles in the sunlight. There really cannot be a prettier lake than this one."

"I should say there is!" exclaimed Rico. "You ought to see the one I mean! No such black fir trees with needles grow by my lake. We have shining green leaves and large red flowers there. The hills are not so high and black, nor so near, but show their violet colors from a distance. The sky and water are all a golden glow, and there is such a warm, fragrant air that one can always sit on the shore without being cold. The wind never blows like this, and there is no snow to cover one's shoes as ours are covered now."

This description convinced Stineli that Rico was not speaking of a place that he had simply dreamed about, so she said half sadly: "Perhaps you can go there sometime and see it again. Do you know the way?"

"No," answered Rico, "but I know that you have to go up the Maloja. I have been as far as that with my father, and he showed me the road that leads ever and ever so far down toward the lake. It is such a long way that you could hardly get there."

"It would be easy enough," remarked Stineli. "All you have to do is just to keep right on going farther and farther and at last you _must_ get there."

"Yes," said Rico, "but father told me something else too. You have to go to hotels to eat and to sleep on the way, and it takes money for that."

"But think of the money we own together!" cried Stineli.

Rico frowned and said: "That doesn't amount to anything. I found that out when I wanted to buy a violin."

"Then you had better stay at home and not go, Rico. It is always nice to be at home."

Rico sat lost in thought, his head resting on his arm. Stineli was busy gathering some moss and shaping it into pillows, which she intended to take to the sick ones when she and Rico went home. She thought nothing of Rico's silence until he said: "You say that I can stay at home, but it seems to me exactly as if that were something I did not have. I am sure I don't know where it is."

"O Rico, what are you saying!" cried the astonished Stineli, letting the moss fall unheeded in her lap. "You are at home here, of course. You are always at home where your father and mother--" Here she stopped abruptly as she remembered that Rico had no mother and that his father had not been at home for ever so long, and she shuddered as she thought of his aunt, of whom she had always been afraid. She scarcely knew how to continue, yet it grieved her to see Rico so sadly silent. She impulsively took his hand and said, "I should like to know the name of the lake where it is so beautiful."

Rico meditated a moment. "I don't know it, Stineli. I wonder what it can be and why I can't remember it!"

"Let us try to find out," suggested Stineli; "then, when we get money enough, you will be able to find your way to it. We might ask the teacher about it, and possibly grandmother could tell us."

"I think my father will know, and I will ask him just as soon as he comes back."

They heard the vesper bell ringing in the distance. They rose immediately and ran through the bushes and snow, down the hill and across the meadow. In a few moments they were panting beside the grandmother, who stood at the door waiting for them. She greeted them hastily and motioned for Stineli to pass into the house; then she added to Rico: "I think that you had better go in when you get to the house to-night, instead of waiting awhile outside. It may be better."

No one had ever spoken like that to him before, and he wondered why she asked it of him. He wished to obey the grandmother, but he could not help entering the house reluctantly.