The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories by Lydia Maria Francis Child
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page 15 of 158 (09%)
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wine, and she and Gaspar went back to the village to paint their own
pictures, leaving the little magician to crack his nuts and look into his show box as long as he pleased. THE VIOLET FLAME Rosamond was the child of a village blacksmith, and of a lady said by the villagers to be a princess from a far land. She herself claimed to be descended from an Ocean Queen; but no one believed that, except her little girl, who thought her mother must know best. Rosamond would sit by her for hours, gazing into the river that flowed through their garden, and listening to her mothers stories of golden palaces beneath the water. But she also liked to pry about her father's forge, and wonder at the quick sparks and great roaring fires. Her cousin Alfred would stay there with her, but while she was watching the red glow of the fire and the heavy fall of her father's hammer, he was gazing upon the violet flame that flickered above her forehead. One day, when she was playing with him in the picture gallery of the old castle, in which his mother was housekeeper, she called him to look at the portrait of a child daintily holding a bird on the tip of her finger, and arrayed in the quaint richness of the old-fashioned costume. "She looks like you," her cousin said, "only she has not a little trembling flame upon her forehead." "Have I a flame upon my forehead?" asked Rosamond, wondering. |
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