The maiden’s mother rose and helped the young man down the ladder, and as he entered the fire-light he laid the bundle down.
“My fathers and mothers, my sisters and friends, how be ye these many days?” said he, very carefully, as though he were speaking to a council.
“Happy! Happy!” they all responded, and they said also: “Sit down; sit down on this stool,” which they placed for him in the fire-light.
“My daughter,” remarked the old man, who was smoking his cigarette by the opposite side of the hearth-place, “when a stranger enters the house of a stranger, the girl should place before him food and cooked things.” So the girl brought from the great vessel in the corner fresh rolls of héwe, or bread of corn-flour, thin as papers, and placed them in a tray before the young man, where the light would fall on them.
“Eat!” said she, and he replied, “It is well.” Whereupon he sat up very straight, and placing his left hand across his breast, very slowly took a roll of the wafer bread with his right hand and ate ever so little; for you know it is not well or polite to eat much when you go to see a strange girl, especially if you want to ask her if she will let you live in the same house with her. So the young man ate ever so little, and said, “Thank you.”
“Eat more,” said the old ones; but when he replied that he was “past the naming of want,” they said, “Have eaten,” and the girl carried the tray away and swept away the crumbs.
“Well,” said the old man, after a short time, “when a stranger enters the house of a stranger, it is not thinking of nothing that he enters.”
“Why, that is quite true,” said the youth, and then he waited.
“Then what may it be that thou hast come thinking of?” added the old man.
“I have heard,” said the young man, “of your daughter, and have seen her, and it was with thoughts of her that I came.”