IN MIDSUMMER DAYS

In Midsummer days when in the countries of the North the earth is
a bride, when the ground is full of gladness, when the brooks are
still running, the flowers in the meadows still untouched by the
scythe, and all the birds singing, a dove flew out of the wood and
sat down before the cottage in which the ninety-year-old granny
lay in her bed.

The old woman had been bedridden for twenty years, but she could
see through her window everything that happened in the farmyard
which was managed by her two sons. But she saw the world and the
people in her own peculiar manner, for time and the weather had
painted her window-panes with all the colours of the rainbow; she
need but turn her head a little and things appeared successively
red, yellow, green, blue, and violet. If she happened to look out
on a cold winter's day when the trees were covered with hoar-frost
and the white foliage looked as if it were made of silver, she
had but to turn her head a little on the pillow, and all the trees
were green; it was summer-time, the ploughed fields were yellow,
and the sky looked blue even if a moment before it had been ever
so grey. And therefore the old granny imagined that she could work
magic, and was never bored.

But the magical window-panes possessed another quality; they bulged
a little and consequently they magnified or reduced every object
which came into their field of vision. Whenever, therefore, her
grown-up son came home in a bad temper and scolded everybody, granny
had but to wish him to be a good little boy again, and straightway
she saw him quite small. Or, when she watched her grandchildren