"Heaven knows," had said the musician, "what sweet hostess may not greet your youthship to-night."
To their knock the door was opened by a slip of a peasant girl. The light from within shone on her long yellow plaits of hair and her small brown face.
Steven was conscious of a distinct shock of disappointment. What folly had this fantastic chance companion fiddled into his mind that he should have found himself expecting something meet for his high-born fancy in this lonely forest house?
"Geiger-Onkel!" cried the girl, in surprise.
And "Geiger-Onkel!" was echoed joyfully indoors. An old peasant woman came waddling forward, hands outstretched.
"Be kind to my comrade, Forest-mother," said the player, "while I see to this brother beast."
He led the horse towards the back yard. And Steven stepped into the great kitchen, glad at least of its prosaic aroma of pot-herbs, since romance had fallen silent with the fiddle.
It was a long room, panelled with age-polished oak which reflected the light of the hanging brass lamp and of the ruddy hearth as jonquil flamelets and poppy glow. A black oaken table, running nearly from end to end, was covered half-way with a snowy cloth, red-hemmed and flowered. There were presses, laden with crockery and pewter. There was a tall clock, with a merry painted face and a solemn tick. There were stags' horns and grinning boars' heads above the presses. Not that Steven had any interest to bestow on these things: he was glad that the place was clean. He thought the oaken chair hard sitting for his noble person, but it was better than the milestone. The Forest-mother seemed a decent sort of body; with a due sense, too, of the quality of her guest. As for the peasant child, he did not notice her at all—not even the pretty foot in buckled shoe and scarlet stocking, of which the short peasant skirt gave such a generous display.
Yet it was to her that Geiger-Hans made his courtly bow as he entered in his turn.
"Mamzell Sidonia!" said he, his old hat clapped over his heart.