The Magic Nuts

'Perhaps you didn't believe enough in them,' said Leonore sagely; and to herself she added, 'I have a sort of idea that Fraulein's aunt knows more about them than Fraulein does. I shall soon find out, though I won't say anything for a day or two till I see. But nothing will ever make me believe that I didn't hear somebody laughing just now.'

Her hand had strayed again to her jacket pocket as she said this to herself, and her fingers were feeling the nuts.

'It is funny that just three are left,' she thought, 'for so often in fairy stories you read about three nuts, or three kernels. I won't crack my nuts in a hurry, however.'

A few minutes more brought them to the summit of the steep incline, and soon the driver's voice and the cracking of his whip as he cheered up his horses sounded close behind them. He halted for a short time to give his animals a little rest, and then Fraulein and Leonore got back into the carriage.

'The rest of the way is almost level,' said the former; 'quite so as we enter Dorf. You will see, Leonore, how fast we shall go at the end. The drivers love to make a clatter and jingle to announce their arrival. No doubt my aunt will hear it, and be at the gate some minutes before she can possibly see us.'

CHAPTER III

IT IS HILDEGARDE

    A pair of friends. – Wordsworth.

Fraulein was right. Both driver and horses woke up wonderfully as the first straggling houses of the village came in sight; it would be impossible to describe the extraordinary sounds and ejaculations which Friedrich, as he was called, addressed to his steeds, but which they evidently quite understood.

'How nice it is to go so fast, and to hear the bells jingling so,' said Leonore. 'I wish we had farther to go.'

'If that were the case we should soon sober down again,' said Fraulein with a smile, adding the next moment, 'and here we are. See the good aunt, my child, as I told you – standing at the gate, just as I last saw her, when I left her five years ago! But then it was parting and tears – now it is meeting and joy.'

Tears nevertheless were not wanting in the eyes of both the good ladies – tears of happiness, however, which were quickly wiped away.

'How well you are looking – not a day older,' said the niece.

'And you, my Elsa – how well you look. A trifle stouter perhaps, but that is an improvement. You have always been too thin, my child,' said the aunt, fondly patting Fraulein's shoulders, though she had to reach up to do so. Then she moved quickly to Leonore with a little exclamation of apology.

'And I have not yet welcomed our guest. Welcome to Dorf, my Fraulein – a thousand times welcome, and may you be as happy here as the old aunt will wish to make you.'

Leonore had been standing by eyeing the aunt and niece with the greatest interest. It amused her much to hear her governess spoken to as 'my child,' for to her Fraulein seemed quite old, long past the age of thinking how old she was. Indeed, the white-haired little lady did not seem to her much older!

'Thank you,' she said in reply to the aunt's kind words. 'I hope I shall be very happy here, but please don't call me anything but Leonore.'

'As you please,' her new friend replied, while Fraulein smiled beamingly. She was most anxious that her aunt and her pupil should make friends, and she knew that, though Leonore was a polite and well-mannered little girl, she had likes and dislikes of her own, and not always quite reasonable ones. Perhaps, to put it shortly, she felt anxious that her charge was just a trifle spoilt, and that she herself had had a hand in the spoiling.

'A motherless child,' she had said to herself many and many a time in excuse during the five years she had had the care of Leonore, for Fraulein had gone to her when the little girl was only four years old, 'and her papa so far away! Who could be severe with her?'

Not tender-hearted Fraulein Elsa, most certainly!

So she felt especially delighted when Leonore replied so prettily to her aunt, and still more so when the child lifted up her face for the kiss of welcome which Aunt Anna was only too ready to bestow, though she would have been rather surprised had she known the thoughts that were in Leonore's head at the moment.

'I believe she does know something about fairies,' the little girl was saying to herself. 'She has nice twinkly eyes, and – oh, I don't know what makes me think so, but I believe she does understand about them. Any way, she won't be like my aunts in England who always want me to read improving books and say I am getting too big for fairy stories.'

That first evening in the quaint old village was full of interest for Leonore. Aunt Anna's house in itself was charming to her, for though really small as to the size and number of its rooms, it did not seem so. There were such nice 'twisty' passages, and funny short flights of steps, each leading perhaps to only one room, or even to nothing more than a landing with a window.

And, standing at one of these, the little girl made a grand discovery, which took her flying off to the room where Fraulein was busily unpacking the boxes which the carrier had already brought.

'Fraulein, Fraulein,' she cried; 'I've been looking out at the back of the house, and just across the yard there's a lovely sort of big courtyard and buildings round it, and I saw a man all white and powdery carrying sacks. Is there a mill here?'

'Yes, my dear,' Fraulein replied. 'Did I not tell you? It is a very old mill, and the same people have had it for nearly a hundred years – such nice people too. I will take you all over it in a day or two – it will amuse you to see the different kinds of grain and flour, all so neatly arranged.'

'And the same people have been there for nearly a hundred years!' exclaimed Leonore. 'How very old they must be.'

Fraulein laughed. Though Leonore was so fond of wonders and fancies, she was sometimes very matter-of-fact. Aunt Anna, who just then joined them, smiled kindly.

'Elsa did not mean the same persons,' she explained, 'but the same family – the same name. Those there now – the miller himself – is the great-grandson of the man who was there first when the mill was built, which was, I think, fully more than a hundred years ago,' she added, turning to her niece.

Leonore looked rather disappointed.

'Oh,' she said, 'I thought it would be so nice to see people who were a hundred. Then, I suppose, the people here aren't any older than anywhere else.'

'I can scarcely say that,' Aunt Anna replied. 'There are some very old, and – there are odd stories about a few of the aged folk. I know one or two who do not seem to have grown any older since I can remember, and my memory goes back a good way now. But, my dears, I came to tell you that supper is ready – we must not let it get cold.'

She held out her hand to Leonore as she spoke. The little girl took it, and went off with her very happily, Fraulein calling after them that she would follow immediately.

'Please tell me, Aunt Anna,' said Leonore – it had been decided that she should thus address the old lady – 'please tell me, do you mean that some of these very old people who don't grow any older are a kind of fairy?'

She spoke almost in a whisper, but she was quite in earnest.

'Well,' said Aunt Anna, 'this country is on the borders of Fairyland, so who can say? When we were children – I and my brothers and sisters and the little barons and baronesses up at the Castle – when we all played together long ago, we used often to try to find the way there – and fairies, of course, are much cleverer than we are. I don't see why some of them may not stray into our world sometimes.'

'And pretend to be not fairies,' said Leonore eagerly. 'P'raps they go back to Fairyland every night, and are here every day; fairies don't need to go to sleep ever, do they?'

But Aunt Anna had not time to reply just then, for supper was on the table, and all her attention was given to seeing that the dishes were what they should be, and in helping her little guest to Leonore's liking.

When Fraulein joined them, however, the conversation took a more general turn.

'I was speaking just now to Leonore,' Aunt Anna began, 'of my childhood – when your dear father, Elsie, and the others, and I used to play with the castle children. And that reminds me that I have a piece of news for you – things repeat themselves it is said. It will be strange if a second generation – ' she said no more, and for a moment or two seemed lost in thought – the thought of the past!

Fraulein was used to her aunt's ways; the old lady was a curious mixture of practical commonsense and dreamy fancifulness. But after a little pause the niece recalled her to the present.

'A piece of news, you said, aunt? Good news, I hope?' she inquired.

'I think so,' said the aunt. 'It is about the family at the Castle. Little Baroness Hildegarde is probably, almost certainly, coming here to spend the winter with her grandparents. She may arrive any day.'

'Oh I am pleased to hear it,' said Fraulein. 'It was just what I was hoping might happen, but I dared scarcely think of it. It would be so nice for our dear Leonore to have a companion.'

Leonore pricked up her ears at this.

'Yes, my dear,' Fraulein went on, in answer to the question in her eyes, 'I have not spoken of it to you before, for there seemed so little chance of its coming to pass. It is about the little Hildegarde who would be such a delightful companion for you. She is just about your age, an only child as you are, and such a dear little girl by all accounts. I have not seen her since she was six, but Aunt Anna knows her well, and the family at the Castle have been our most kind friends for so long.'

Leonore looked full of interest but rather perplexed.

'I don't quite understand,' she said. 'Do you mean that the little girl is perhaps coming to live here in this house with us?'

'Oh no, my dear. Her own home is a good way off, but her grandpapa and grandmamma live at the Castle – a large old gray house half way up the hill above the village. I will show it to you to-morrow. It is a wonderfully quaint old place. And the little Baroness comes sometimes on long visits to her grandparents, who love to have her.'

'Only they fear it is lonely for her, as she is accustomed to the life of a great capital,' said Aunt Anna. 'They were delighted to hear I was expecting a little guest, when I saw them the other day, and they told me of the probability of Hildegarde's coming.'