Queen Hildegarde
Queen Hildegarde
Hilda Graham has never known a world beyond Fifth Avenue. Petted, pampered, and profoundly bored by her own refinement, she is the kind of child who has everything and feels nothing. When her parents depart for California and ship her off to Mrs. Hartley, an old family nurse living in a remote valley called Hartley's Glen, Hilda is certain she is being punished. The farmhouse has no gaslight. The neighbors are farmers. There is a rough boy named Bubble Chirk who speaks in dialect and doesn't know which fork to use. But something happens in that sunlit, simple summer. Hilda discovers that chickens need feeding before one's own breakfast. That a contrary calf might teach you patience. That Bubble Chirk, for all his uncouth manners, has a loyalty and humor she has never encountered in any drawing room. By summer's end, the girl who once fainted at a mud puddle has found something far more valuable than velvet gowns: a self worth being.
