Wolfgang heard his wife’s commands and obeyed them after his own manner, by lifting his mighty voice and shouting in his native patois–“Little heart! Son of my love! Come, come hither.”
But he did not, for all that, cease from his respectful attention to the stranger, for whom he had promptly brought out the best chair he owned, and whose horse he had taken to a shaded spot and carefully rubbed down with a handful of dried grass.
Presently, the “child” appeared, and the Easterner flashed a smile toward Jessica, whose own face was dimpled with mirth; for the “child,” Otto, proved to be a gaunt six-footer, lean as he was long, and with a manly beard upon his pink and white face. He shambled forward on his great feet and shyly extended his mighty hands.
Mr. Hale grasped them heartily, eager to put the awkward youth at ease; and, nodding toward the chair from which he had risen, exclaimed:
“So, you are he who does that beautiful carving! I congratulate you on your skill, and I hope you will have some trifle of your work to sell a traveler. I’ve never seen finer.”
Otto flushed with pleasure and was about to reply, but again Elsa commanded:
“Milk the goat, little one. After the guest feeds let the household talk.”
As if he had been the “child,” the “little heart,” his parents called him he obediently entered the cabin, tied an apron before his lank body and spread a tablecloth. Then, as deftly as if he had been a girl, he arranged it with the three cups and plates the family possessed, took his mother’s cherished spoons from her chest, and, taking a small pail, sought the goat, Gretchen.
“Now, I’m in for it,” thought Mr. Hale, regretfully. “My poor dyspepsia! Coffee, honey, and goat’s milk! A combination to kill. But even if it is, one must respond to such whole-souled hospitality as this.”
Jessica had no such qualms; and, indeed, the refreshment which her visitor forced himself to accept was far more palatable than he had dared expect; and, besides, he now brought to it that astonishing appetite which had come to him on this eventful trip. When the luncheon was disposed of, Dame Elsa held an exhibition of her wonderful knitting and it seemed to the unappreciative stranger that a small fortune must have been expended in yarns, and that even in this wilderness one might be extravagant and wasteful.