“Oh!” cried Honor. “Oh, Zitli, how thrilling! What did he say?”
“He spoke in a strange tongue! No word of it was to be understood.”
“And—did he look like a Roman?”
Zitli shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands abroad with a quaint gesture. “Can I tell, mademoiselle? I never saw a Roman, nor, we may suppose, did the shepherd. He looked, that one said, like Uncle Kissel.”
Gretli gave a little murmur of deprecation; Honor pressed on, all eagerness.
“Who is Uncle Kissel?”
“He is an old miser, mean and hateful, and ugly as sin—”
Zitli stopped short. Atli had laid down his tools, Gretli her knitting; both were looking at him very gravely. The blood rushed into the boy’s face, and his eyes dropped.
“I—I ask your pardon, brother and sister!” he said. “I forgot!”
Atli spoke, more sternly than Honor had thought he could speak.