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Page 7
The knight was well contented with this reception; and alighting from
his horse, which his host assisted him to relieve from saddle and
bridle, he let him hasten away to the fresh pasture, and thus spoke:
"Even had I found you less hospitable and kindly disposed, my worthy
old friend, you would still, I suspect, hardly have got rid of me
to-day; for here, I perceive, a broad lake lies before us, and as to
riding back into that wood of wonders, with the shades of evening
deepening around me, may Heaven in its grace preserve me from the
thought."
"Pray, not a word of the wood, or of returning into it!" said the
fisherman, and took his guest into the cottage.
There beside the hearth, from which a frugal fire was diffusing its
light through the clean twilight room, sat the fisherman's aged wife
in a great chair. At the entrance of their noble guest, she rose and
gave him a courteous welcome, but sat down again in her seat of
honour, not making the slightest offer of it to the stranger. Upon
this the fisherman said with a smile:
"You must not be offended with her, young gentleman, because she has
not given up to you the best chair in the house; it is a custom among
poor people to look upon this as the privilege of the aged."
"Why, husband!" cried the old lady, with a quiet smile, "where can
your wits be wandering? Our guest, to say the least of him, must
belong to a Christian country; and how is it possible, then, that so
well-bred a young man as he appears to be could dream of driving old
people from their chairs? Take a seat, my young master," continued
she, turning to the knight; "there is still quite a snug little chair
on the other side of the room there, only be careful not to shove it
about too roughly, for one of its legs, I fear, is none of the
firmest."
The knight brought up the seat as carefully as she could desire, sat
down upon it good-humouredly, and it seemed to him almost as if he
must be somehow related to this little household, and have just
returned home from abroad.
These three worthy people now began to converse in the most friendly
and familiar manner. In relation to the forest, indeed, concerning
which the knight occasionally made some inquiries, the old man chose
to know and say but little; he was of opinion that slightly touching
upon it at this hour of twilight was most suitable and safe; but of
the cares and comforts of their home, and their business abroad, the
aged couple spoke more freely, and listened also with eager curiosity
as the knight recounted to them his travels, and how he had a castle
near one of the sources of the Danube, and that his name was Sir
Huldbrand of Ringstetten.
Already had the stranger, while they were in the midst of their talk,
heard at times a splash against the little low window, as if some one
were dashing water against it. The old man, every time he heard the
noise, knit his brows with vexation; but at last, when the whole
sweep of a shower came pouring like a torrent against the panes, and
bubbling through the decayed frame into the room, he started up
indignant, rushed to the window, and cried with a threatening voice--
"Undine! will you never leave off these fooleries?--not even to-day,
when we have a stranger knight with us in the cottage?"
All without now became still, only a low laugh was just audible, and
the fisherman said, as he came back to his seat, "You will have the
goodness, my honoured guest, to pardon this freak, and it may be a
multitude more; but she has no thought of evil or of any harm. This
mischievous Undine, to confess the truth, is our adopted daughter,
and she stoutly refuses to give over this frolicsome childishness of
hers, although she has already entered her eighteenth year. But in
spite of this, as I said before, she is at heart one of the very best
children in the world."
"YOU may say so," broke in the old lady, shaking her head; "you can
give a better account of her than I can. When you return home from
fishing, or from selling your fish in the city, you may think her
frolics very delightful, but to have her dancing about you the whole
day long, and never from morning to night to hear her speak one word
of sense; and then as she grows older, instead of having any help
from her in the family, to find her a continual cause of anxiety,
lest her wild humours should completely ruin us, that is quite
another thing, and enough at last to weary out the patience even of
a saint."
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