'A baby of a few days old cannot pick things up,' she said. 'No, it has never been explained. None of the servants had put them into her hand—indeed they would not have been so foolish, and they could scarcely have had the chance of doing so. And it was said by the one or two who declared they had met her, that the beautiful lady was carrying a basket on her arm filled with common hazel-nuts, and some days afterwards one of the foresters said that late that same evening a little old woman whom he had never seen before stopped him up in the high woods to ask the way to some strange place of which he had never heard, and she—the little old woman—was carrying a basket of nuts. She offered him some, but he thought she was a witch and would not have any.'
'Dear me, Aunt Anna,' exclaimed her niece, 'I did not know all these wonderful tales. Surely they grew out of finding the nuts in the baby's hands. I do remember hearing that, though I had forgotten it.'
'Perhaps that was the origin of it all,' said her aunt quietly. 'Still, Hildegarde is an uncommon child. It certainly seems as if she had received some fairy gifts, however they came to her.'
Leonore did not speak, but she listened intently. She would probably have not contented herself with listening but for knowing that she was so soon to see Hildegarde herself again.
'She will be the best person to ask,' thought Leonore. 'I will tell her about my nuts and the little old woman who gave me them, and about the pretty laugh I heard in the wood, and then, I feel sure, she will tell me all she knows.'
She could scarcely finish her dinner, so eager and excited did she feel. And she was more than delighted when, at the close of the meal, kind Fraulein proposed to her that, as Hildegarde had come to meet them that morning, Leonore should show her new little friend the same attention.
'You can scarcely miss her,' she said. 'She is sure to come the same way that I took you this morning. If you get ready now, and start in a quarter of an hour or so, you will be about right, I should say. They dine early at the Castle. But I should like you to change your dress in case you should be presented to the Baroness—Hildegarde's grandmamma.'
Leonore ran off to get ready. She was not long about it, but all the same her new little friend must have been even quicker, for Leonore met her a very few steps only from Aunt Anna's gate. Hildegarde's face lighted up with a smile when she caught sight of the other little girl.
'So you have come to meet me,' she said; 'that is very nice of you. I hope I have not come too soon. Shall I go in now to see Aunt Anna?'