Árdís - 01.01.1966, Blaðsíða 47

Ársrit Bandalags lúterskra kvenna
45
“Arni, where are all the things that you bought?” cried Beta,
just as they were sitting down.
‘O! I left them in the sleigh. I’ll get them right away,” said
Arni, jumping up. He was gone to return in a moment with an
armful of bundles and laying them on the bed, returned to the
table.
“Thank you,” said Veiga. “We will leave them until after
supper, although I am very curious to see what you have brought.”
When the meal was finished and everything cleared away, the
business of looking over the purchases was in order.
“Well, Girls, I bought a little of everything there was in the
store at Caffron, (the only town in the radius of fifty or sixty
miles). Here, Veiga, is a present for you,” he said as he handed
her a parcel, “and here, Beta, is yours.”
Veiga unwrapped a pair of black kid slippers with a butter-
fly worked in silver beads on the toe of each one.
“Oh! Oh! How lovely! They are so pretty! How did Coulter
come to have them?”
“The storekeeper ordered them for the doctor’s wife but they
were altogether too small for her.”
Veiga slipped them on her tiny feet and they fitted perfectly.
They looked as if they had been made for her dainty self.
Beta opened her parcel and found a little broach made in the
shape of a bow knot set with a row of brilliants down the middle
of the ribbon with a large red stone in the centre. She did not
utter a sound. She just stared in amazement. At last, with great
tears filling her eyes, she looked up.
“Oh, Arni. The very first bit of jewellery I have ever owned.
Isn’t it beautiful? Look, Veiga, doesn’t it look lovely?”
In all of Beta’s thirteen years nothing half so wonderful had
happened to her.
“I tried to get a new story book but the town does not carry
anything of the kind. When I asked Mr. Coulter at the General
Store about it he told me to try Mr. Cyr, the blacksmith, as he
could read both French and English, he might have some ... but,
when I asked him, all he had was a pricelist of pigiron and
anvils.”