The Magic Nuts, Mrs. Molesworth [books for men to read txt] 📗

parts and giving her a little historical account of it, to which she listened with interest. Suddenly—for all was very silent just then—they heard steps approaching and a clear young voice singing softly. And—Fraulein stopped talking and stood gazing before her, as did Leonore, till—from among the trees which bordered the short approach to the inner gateway, there appeared a childish figure, running towards them, singing as she came. A young girl, dressed all in white, with fair floating hair——

'It is Hildegarde,' said Leonore, growing pale with excitement. For the figure was exactly like the little girl in her dream!

CHAPTER IV ON THE WAY

Oh, what is that country,
And where can it be?—Rossetti.

If Fraulein heard what Leonore said, she did not seem surprised, for though she did not, of course, know about the little girl's curious dream, she knew that Hildegarde's coming had been freely talked about the evening before. But she was very astonished a moment later when Hildegarde, looking up quietly, said with a smile—

'I have come to meet you. I was sure I should.'

'My dear child!' exclaimed Fraulein. 'How could you know? The fairies must have told you!'

The little stranger smiled again.

'This is Leonore,' she said, taking the other child's hand. 'Grandmamma told me her name, but grandmamma did not know I should meet you'; and she shook her head with a funny little air of mystery.

'It is wonderful,' said Fraulein; 'it is even wonderful that you should know me again. It is five years—five years—since you saw me last—half your life.'

'Yes,' said Hildegarde, 'but I can remember longer ago than that.'

She was still holding Leonore's hand, and though the little English girl felt rather shy, and had not yet spoken to her new friend, yet she liked the touch of the gentle fingers and pressed them in return, while she looked at Hildegarde's pretty fair face in admiration.

'I am coming soon to see Aunt Anna,' Hildegarde went on. 'Will you give her my love, Fraulein Elsa, and tell her so? May I come this afternoon?'

'Certainly, certainly,' said Fraulein; 'the sooner you and Leonore make friends, the better pleased we shall all be.'

At this Leonore took courage.

'Yes,' she said, looking earnestly at Hildegarde with her serious dark eyes. 'I want very much to be friends.'

'It will not take long,' said Hildegarde, and then, for the first time, Leonore noticed that the little girl's eyes were not like any she had ever seen before. They were not blue, as one would have expected from her light, almost flaxen hair and fair complexion, but a kind of bright hazel-brown—with lovely flashes, almost, as it were, of sunshine, coming and going.

'They are golden eyes,' thought Leonore; and when she repeated this to Fraulein afterwards, her governess agreed with her that she was right.

'I remember noticing their colour when she was a very tiny child,' said Fraulein, thinking to herself that the two little girls made a pretty contrast, for Leonore's hair was dark, as well as her eyes.

Hildegarde held up her face for Fraulein to kiss, and then she ran off again, saying as she did so—

'Do not forget to tell Aunt Anna I am coming, and perhaps she will make some of those dear little round cakes I love so—she knows which they are. Leonore will like them too, I am sure.'

The day was getting on by this time; it was past noon.

'We will just stroll to the other end of the village,' said Fraulein; 'from there we shall have the side view of the Castle—there is a short cut down to the street at that end, by some steps, but they are rough and in need of repair, so we generally prefer the longer way. The old Baron has spoken of shutting off the side entrance; he says it is only fit for goats to scramble up.'

Leonore thought, though she did not say so, that it would be very amusing for little girls all the same, and determined to ask Hildegarde about it. She thought the Castle even more interesting seen sideways than in front; it looked so very close to the thick dark trees behind, almost as if it touched them.

'I shall have lots of things to talk to Hildegarde about,' she said to herself. 'These woods are very fairy-looking. And I think I must tell her my strange dream about her and the nuts. I don't think she would laugh at it. I hope I have them quite safe.'

Yes, they lay snugly in her pocket, wrapped up in the piece of paper—a nice piece of pink paper that she had found among her things.

'I will leave them where they are,' she thought, 'and then I shall be sure to remember to tell Hildegarde my dream.'

It was nearly dinner-time when they got back to Aunt Anna's, for in that part of the world big people as well as little dine in the middle of the day. Aunt Anna was most interested in hearing of Hildegarde's arrival, and quite as delighted as Fraulein had been.

'And was it not strange that she should have come to meet us?' said Fraulein. 'She must have had a presentiment about it.'

'What is a presentiment?' asked Leonore.

'A sort of knowing beforehand about something that is going to happen,' answered Fraulein. 'Many people have the feeling, but very often it does not come true, and then it is not a real presentiment. It is not everybody that has real presentiments.'

Aunt Anna smiled. Leonore was learning to love her smiles. They reminded her of some other smile—whose was it? Hildegarde's?—yes, a little, perhaps, but no, she had seen Hildegarde for the first time that morning, and this feeling about Aunt Anna's smile had come to her already yesterday. Whose smile could it be?

'Hildegarde is a dear child,' said Aunt Anna, 'and perhaps she is one of the few who know more than the everyday people. And she was born at the Castle and spent her babyhood there. How well I remember the day she was christened!'

'Oh, do tell me,' exclaimed Leonore impulsively. 'Did they have a grand feast, and did they invite any fairies? Perhaps she had a fairy godmother.'

'Leonore!' said Fraulein, beginning to laugh. 'You are getting too fanciful—you really——'

'Nay, Elsa,' interrupted Aunt Anna. 'Let the child say out what is in her mind, and remember, we are here in our dear country, close on the borders of Fairyland——'

'Yes, Fraulein,' Leonore interrupted in her turn. 'You said so yourself.'

'And assuredly,' Aunt Anna went on, 'if Hildegarde has a fairy godmother, she has given her none but good gifts.'

'You speak as if such things were possible, my dear aunt,' said Fraulein. 'We must not let Leonore grow too fanciful. I shall have you and her taking flight in an airy chariot drawn by white swans or something of that kind some fine day, if I don't take care.'

'Well, you and Hildegarde can come after us in another chariot if we do,' said Aunt Anna, laughing.

But Leonore remained serious.

'Please tell me, Aunt Anna,' she said, 'as you were at Hildegarde's christening, was there any one there who might have been a fairy?'

Aunt Anna hesitated.

'There was an odd story,' she replied, 'about a beautiful lady who was met coming away from the nursery, when the baby had been left alone in her cot for a moment or two. And when the nurse went back she found her smiling and crowing and chuckling to herself as if she were six months instead of only a few days old, and in her little hand she was tightly clasping——'

'What?' asked Leonore breathlessly.

'Three nuts,' replied Aunt Anna impressively. 'Three common little brown hazel-nuts. That part of the story is true, for Hildegarde has the nuts to this day, I believe—at least she had them the last time she was here.'

'She must have picked them up somehow,' said Fraulein.

Aunt Anna shook her head.

'A baby of a few days old cannot pick things up,' she said. 'No, it has never been explained. None of the servants had put them into her hand—indeed they would not have been so foolish, and they could scarcely have had the chance of doing so. And it was said by the one or two who declared they had met her, that the beautiful lady was carrying a basket on her arm filled with common hazel-nuts, and some days afterwards one of the foresters said that late that same evening a little old woman whom he had never seen before stopped him up in the high woods to ask the way to some strange place of which he had never heard, and she—the little old woman—was carrying a basket of nuts. She offered him some, but he thought she was a witch and would not have any.'

'Dear me, Aunt Anna,' exclaimed her niece, 'I did not know all these wonderful tales. Surely they grew out of finding the nuts in the baby's hands. I do remember hearing that, though I had forgotten it.'

'Perhaps that was the origin of it all,' said her aunt quietly. 'Still, Hildegarde is an uncommon child. It certainly seems as if she had received some fairy gifts, however they came to her.'

Leonore did not speak, but she listened intently. She would probably have not contented herself with listening but for knowing that she was so soon to see Hildegarde herself again.

'She will be the best person to ask,' thought Leonore. 'I will tell her about my nuts and the little old woman who gave me them, and about the pretty laugh I heard in the wood, and then, I feel sure, she will tell me all she knows.'

She could scarcely finish her dinner, so eager and excited did she feel. And she was more than delighted when, at the close of the meal, kind Fraulein proposed to her that, as Hildegarde had come to meet them that morning, Leonore should show her new little friend the same attention.

'You can scarcely miss her,' she said. 'She is sure to come the same way that I took you this morning. If you get ready now, and start in a quarter of an hour or so, you will be about right, I should say. They dine early at the Castle. But I should like you to change your dress in case you should be presented to the Baroness—Hildegarde's grandmamma.'

Leonore ran off to get ready. She was not long about it, but all the same her new little friend must have been even quicker, for Leonore met her a very few steps only from Aunt Anna's gate. Hildegarde's face lighted up with a smile when she caught sight of the other little girl.

'So you have come to meet me,' she said; 'that is very nice of you. I hope I have not come too soon. Shall I go in now to see Aunt Anna?'

Leonore looked a little disappointed, which Hildegarde seemed at once to understand.

'I don't mean to stay with Aunt Anna,' she added quickly; 'what I want is for you and me to go out somewhere together. It is a lovely day, and I have leave to stay out till dusk. My grandmamma is going to pay some visits, so she hopes to see you some other day—perhaps to-morrow. I think we shall get to know each other far the best by being alone by ourselves—don't you think so?'

'Yes, certainly,' said Leonore, her face clearing. 'I am so glad you understand. I have such a lot of things to talk to you about.'

Hildegarde nodded her head. It was a little habit of hers to do so without speaking sometimes.

'Then we must not lose any of our time,' she said, after a moment's pause. 'But first I will run in to give Aunt Anna