ehind a fence, which stretched out its
branches over the street. Many a spring and summer evening, when the
rest of the inhabitants of the house were abroad on parties of pleasure,
sate Susanna quietly by the little slumbering Hulda, within the little
chamber which she had fitted up for herself and her sister, and observed
with quiet melancholy from her window the green tree, whose twigs and
leaves waved and beckoned so kindly and invitingly in the wind.

By degrees the green leaves beckoned into her soul thoughts and plans,
which eventually fashioned themselves into a determined form, or rather
an estate, whose realisation from this time forth became the paradise of
her soul and the object of her life. This estate was a little farm in
the country, which Susanna would rent, and cultivate, and make
profitable by her own industry and her own management. She planted
potatoes; she milked cows and made butter; she sowed, she reaped; and
the labour was to her a delight; for there, upon the soft grass, under
the green, waving tree, sate the little Hulda, and played with flowers,
and her blue eyes beamed with happiness, and no care and no want came
near her.

All Susanna's thoughts and endeavours directed themselves to the
realising of this idea. The next step towards it was the obtaining a
good service, in which, by saving her wages, she could obtain a sum of
money sufficient to commence her rural undertaking. Susanna flattered
herself, that in a few years she could bring her scheme to bear, and
therefore made inquiries after a suitable situation.

There were this year among the visitors at the watering-place of
Gustafsberg, which lay near to Uddevalla, a Norwegian Colonel and his
lady. He was lame from a paralytic stroke, and had lost the use of his
speech and of his hands. He was a large man, of a fierce, stern
exterior; and although he seemed to endure nobody near him but his wife,
and perpetually demanded her care, still it was evidently not out of
love. And although his wife devoted herself unweariedly and
self-denyingly to his service, still this evidently was not from love
either, but from some other extraordinary power. Her own health was
visibly deeply affected, and violent spasms often attacked her breast;
but night or day, whenever it was his will to rise, it was her patient,
bowed neck around which his arm was laid. She stood by his side, and
supported him in the cold shower-bath, which was intended to re-awaken