the sea-air. She was rather tall than otherwise, but her
figure was so graceful that I think you never thought her
tall. Her eyes were perhaps deep-set, and of that
strange gray which I have heard it said the goddesses in
the Greek poetry had. Still, when she was sad, one saw
the less of all this. It was not till she forgot her
grief for the instant in the certainty that she might
rest with my mother, so that her whole face blazed with
joy, that I first knew what the perfect beauty of a
perfect woman was.

Her name, it seemed, was Frida,--a name made from the
name of one of the old goddesses among the Northmen, the
same from whom our day Friday is named. She is the half-
sister of Thor, from whom Thursday is named, and the
daughter of Wodin, from whom Wednesday is named.

I knew little of all this then, but I did not wonder
when I read afterward that this northern goddess was the
Goddess of Love, the friend of song, the most beautiful
of all their divinities,--queen of spring and light and
everything lovely.

But surely never any one took fewer of the airs of a
goddess than our Frida did while she was with us. She
would watch my mother, as if afraid that she should put
her hand to a gridiron or a tin dipper. She gave her to
understand, in a thousand pretty ways, that she should be
her faithful, loving, and sincere. servant. If she would
only show her what to do, she would work for her as a