The stranger stopped his ears. "For heaven's sake, man," he cried, "stop that infamous noise! Who in the devil's name can stand it, do you think? Do you suppose that I have your plebeian ears? Stop, I say, or----"
He gave the smith a push, as the latter had just before done to his apprentice, but the old man stood more firmly than the young one. With a furious look he raised his hammer--it seemed as if the next moment he would bring it down on the stranger's head.
"Have you gone mad?" said the stranger, casting a stern look at the enraged smith. Then, as the latter slowly lowered the hammer, he began speaking to him in an undertone, to which the old man answered in a muttering voice, in which I thought I could at intervals distinguish my own name.
"It may be," said the stranger; "but here he is now, and here he shall stay."
"Excuse me," I said, "I have not the least idea of thrusting my company upon you: I would not have set my foot in the house, had not----"
"Now he's beginning again," exclaimed the stranger, with a laugh of half vexation; "will you ever come to your senses, you two? What I want is peace and quiet, and above all, some supper; and you shall keep me company. Hallo! Christel! Where is the girl? You, Pinnow, take off your leather apron and come in too."
With these words he opened the low door on the right of the forge-fire, which led from the forge into the living-room. I had often enough been in the latter, and indeed I knew the whole place well: the living-room was a moderately large apartment, but only half as high from floor to ceiling as the forge; the sleeping-rooms lying above it, which were reached by a steep stair, or sort of ladder, in a corner of the room, passing through a hole in the ceiling. There was also a door, reached by two steps, which led into a small side-room, where the smith's mother slept. This old woman, a prodigy of age, was now crouching in her easy-chair in her usual corner, close to the stove, which was heated from without. In the middle of the room stood a heavy oaken table, and on the table the great basket which Christel had brought from the town. Christel herself was apparently searching for something in a closet at the further end of the room.
"Now, Christel," said the stranger, taking a light to look into the basket, "what have you brought? That looks inviting. But bestir yourself, for I am hungry as a wolf--and you too," turning to me--"are you not? One is always hungry at your age. Come this way to the window. Sit down."
He made me sit on one of the two benches that stood in the recess of the window, seated himself on the other, and continued in a somewhat lower tone, with a glance at Christel, who was now, with a noiseless despatch, beginning to set the table:----
"A pretty girl: rather too much of a blonde, perhaps; she is a Hollander; but that is in keeping here: is not the old woman nodding there in her easy chair just like a picture by Terburg? Then old Pinnow, with the face of a bull-dog and the figure of a seal, and Jacob with his carp's eyes! But I like it; I seldom fail, when I have been in the town without my carriage, as happens to-day, to look in here, and let old Pinnow set me over; especially as with a good wind I can get across in half an hour, while by the town-ferry it takes me a full hour, and then afterwards as much more before I reach my estate."