‘You—you—’ he stammered; ‘you must mean Elsa? And Elsa, you say, Elsa cares for me? It can’t—it can’t—be true.’
‘A woman’s heart goes where it will,’ answered the Moss-woman. ‘Try your luck, friend Hans, and lose no time. Life is short, and the days are flying.’
Hans went at once to the house by the mill, for had he not gazed at it time and again as the casket which held his treasure?
When Elsa saw him coming with that look upon his face, she twisted a ribbon, blue as her eyes, in the pale gold plait that crowned her head, and went shyly down to meet him.
“Went shyly down to meet him”
Hans said not a word, but he found a way to make her understand, and his eyes spoke, though his lips were dumb.
They were betrothed and married within the month, and little cared sweet Elsa that her friends marvelled at her choice. She comforted the sad blind dame, whose son was now her husband, as a happy woman comforts one who fears she has lost all, and behold! the old woman smiled again. As to Hans, the neighbours scarcely recognised him when they met him in the markets; she trimmed his beard, did Elsa, with her own hands, and mothered him as if he were a child of seven. His fields grew green, and then golden with harvest; his scanty flocks increased and multiplied.