"Puss, puss, what are you doing?" suddenly cried Rose, breaking from him, and picking up a skein of thread, which the cat held between her fore-paws, beginning a most mystical web.
Peregrine was in a perfect tumult, and the words "Oh, princess!" escaped him without his knowing how it happened. The maiden looked at him in alarm, and he cried out in the softest and most melancholy tone, "My dearest young lady!" Rose blushed, and said with maiden bashfulness, "My parents call me Rose; pray, do the same, my dear Mr. Tyss, for I too am one of the children, to whom you have shown so much kindness, and by whom you are so highly honoured."
"Rose!" cried Peregrine, in a transport. He could have thrown himself at her feet, and it was only with difficulty that he restrained himself.
Rose now related--as she quietly went on with her work--how the war had reduced her parents to distress, and how since that time she had lived with an aunt in a neighbouring village, till a few weeks ago, when upon the death of the old lady, she had returned home.
Peregrine heard only the sweet voice of Rose, without understanding the words too well, and was not perfectly convinced of his being awake, till Lemmerhirt entered the room, and gave him a hearty welcome. Soon after the wife followed with the children, and as thoughts and feelings are strangely blended in the mind of man, it happened now that Peregrine, even in the midst of all his ecstasy, suddenly recollected how the sullen Pepusch had blamed his presents to this very family. He was particularly delighted to find that none of the children had made themselves ill by his gifts, and the pride with which they pointed to a glass case, where the toys were shining, proved that they looked upon them as something extraordinary, never perhaps to recur. The Thistle, in his ill-humour, was quite mistaken.
"Oh, Pepusch!" said Peregrine to himself, "no pure beam of love penetrates thy distempered mind."--In this Peregrine again meant something more than toys and sugar-plums.
Lemmerhirt approached Peregrine, and began to talk in an under-tone of his Rose, elevating her, in the fulness of his heart, into a perfect miracle. But what gave him the most delight was, that Rose had an inclination for the noble art of bookbinding, and in the few weeks that she had been with him had made uncommon advances in the decorative parts, so that she was already much more dexterous than many an oaf of an apprentice, who wasted gold and morocco for years, and set the letters all awry, making them look like so many drunken peasants, staggering out of an ale-house. In the exuberance of his delight, he whispered to Peregrine quite confidentially, "It must out, Mr. Tyss, I can't help it.--Do you know, that it was my Rose who gilded the Ariosto?"
Upon hearing this, Peregrine hastily snatched up the book, as if securing it before he was robbed of it by an enemy. Lemmerhirt took this for a sign that Peregrine wished to go, and begged of him to stay a few minutes longer, and this it was that reminded him at last of the necessity of tearing himself away. He hastily paid his bill, and set off home, dragging along the heavy quartos, as if they had been some treasure.
On entering his house he was met by the old Alina, who pointed to Swammerdamm's chamber with looks of fear and anxiety. The door was open, and he saw Dörtje Elverdink, sitting in an arm-chair, quite stiff, with a face drawn up, as if it belonged to a corpse, already laid in the grave. Just so stiff, so corpse-like sate before her Pepusch, Swammerdamm, and Leuwenhock. The old woman exclaimed, "Is not that a strange, ghastly spectacle? In this manner the three unhappy beings have sate the whole day long, and eat nothing, and drink nothing, and speak nothing, and scarcely fetch their breath."
Peregrine at first felt a slight degree of terror at this strange spectacle, but, as he ascended the stairs, the spectral image was completely swallowed up by the sea of pleasure, in which the delighted Peregrine swam, since his seeing Rose. Wishes, dreams, hopes, were agitating his mind, which he longed to unburthen to some friend; but what friend had Peregrine besides the honest Master Flea? And to him he wished to open his whole heart, to tell him all about Rose,--all in fact that cannot very well be told. But he might call and coax as long as he pleased,--no Master Flea would show himself; he was up and away: at last, in the folds of his neckcloth, where Master Flea had been wont to lodge upon his going abroad, Peregrine found, after a more careful search, a tiny box, whereon was written: