“Ah, my poor niece!” he exclaimed, “she owes her life to you! Is it possible, so young a child! But I never thought you like other children. You have saved the life of a poor woman and her three little children. Nobody would believe it; yet it is true; it is all told here.” And he pointed to the letter in his hand.
At this moment Mrs. de Roisel came up, and welcomed Fritz back again. Then he soon became sufficiently calm to explain himself clearly. It appeared that the young woman, with her three children, whom Maurice had met in the Luxembourg gardens, and had been so kind to, was the niece of Fritz. No sooner had she arrived in America than, overflowing with gratitude, she wrote her uncle a long account of what had happened to them, telling him how they had been saved by a young child named Maurice de Roisel. It was this letter that Fritz held in his hand. He had returned from Nuremberg to his cottage in the village only the evening before, and had come the first thing this morning to express his gratitude to Maurice.
“But how,” asked Fritz, “came you to have so large a sum of money by you to give?”
“Oh, I did not give it all myself: besides, I was obliged to part with Cressida.”
“Is it possible?” cried Fritz, starting back and turning pale. “You didn’t sell it?”
“Alas!” replied Maurice, “it was only by parting with Cressida that I could procure the money.”
“You were right: I must not complain. If it was the only way, you did right.”
“But, oh Fritz! you cannot imagine in what a state I found my poor Cressida again.”
“What!” cried the old man, with the joy of a child, “you have Cressida again then? You should have told me so at first; it would have saved me pain. But you did well to sell it, else how could my poor niece have joined her husband?—my niece who is almost my daughter!”
Then Maurice related Cressida’s adventures, and the wooden horse was brought out for Fritz to look at.