'And do you think it _might_ have been one of them I heard laughing?'

asked Leonore eagerly. 'Oh, how lovely! But then, why didn't you hear it too, Fraulein, and what was it laughing at, do you think? I wasn't saying anything funny. I was only----'

'Dear child,' said Fraulein, 'do not take me up so seriously. I am afraid your papa and your aunts would not think me at all a sensible governess if they heard me chattering away like this to you. Of course I was only joking.'

Leonore looked rather disappointed.

'I wish you _weren't_ joking,' she said. 'I can't see that people need be counted silly who believe in fairies and nice queer things like that.

_I_ think the people who don't are the stupid silly ones. And you will never make me think I _didn't_ hear some one laugh, Fraulein--I just know I did.' Then after a little pause she added, 'Would your old aunt think me very silly for believing about fairies? If she has lived so near Fairyland all her life I shouldn't think she would.'

This was rather a poser for poor Fraulein.

'She would not think you _silly_!' she replied; 'that is to say, she loves fairy stories herself. Life would indeed be very dull if we had no pretty fancies to brighten it with.'

'Oh, but,' said Leonore, 'that's just what I don't want. I mean I don't want to count fairy stories _only_ stories--not real. I like to think there _are_ fairies and brownies and gnomes, and all sorts of good people like that, though it isn't very often that mortals'--she said the last word with great satisfaction--'see them. I am always hoping that some day _I_ shall. And if this country of yours, Fraulein dear, is on the borders of Fairyland, I don't see why I don't run a very good chance of coming across some of them while we are here. They are much more likely to show themselves to any one who does believe in them, I should say. Don't you think so?'

Fraulein laughed.

'I remember feeling just as you do, my child, when I was a little girl,'

she said. 'But time has gone on, and I am no longer young, and I am obliged to confess that I have never seen a fairy.'

'Perhaps you didn't believe _enough_ in them,' said Leonore sagely; and to herself she added, 'I have a sort of idea that Fraulein's aunt knows more about them than Fraulein does. I shall soon find out, though I won't say anything for a day or two till I see. But nothing will ever make me believe that I didn't hear somebody laughing just now.'

Her hand had strayed again to her jacket pocket as she said this to herself, and her fingers were feeling the nuts.

'It is funny that just three are left,' she thought, 'for so often in fairy stories you read about three nuts, or three kernels. I won't crack _my_ nuts in a hurry, however.'

A few minutes more brought them to the summit of the steep incline, and soon the driver's voice and the cracking of his whip as he cheered up his horses sounded close behind them. He halted for a short time to give his animals a little rest, and then Fraulein and Leonore got back into the carriage.

'The rest of the way is almost level,' said the former; 'quite so as we enter Dorf. You will see, Leonore, how fast we shall go at the end. The drivers love to make a clatter and jingle to announce their arrival. No doubt my aunt will hear it, and be at the gate some minutes before she can possibly see us.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTRAIT OF HILDEGARDE.]

CHAPTER III

IT IS HILDEGARDE

A pair of friends.--WORDSWORTH.

Fraulein was right. Both driver and horses woke up wonderfully as the first straggling houses of the village came in sight; it would be impossible to describe the extraordinary sounds and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns which Friedrich, as he was called, addressed to his steeds, but which they evidently quite understood.

'How nice it is to go so fast, and to hear the bells jingling so,' said Leonore. 'I wish we had farther to go.'

'If that were the case we should soon sober down again,' said Fraulein with a smile, adding the next moment, 'and here we are. See the good aunt, my child, as I told you--standing at the gate, just as I last saw her, when I left her five years ago! But then it was parting and tears--now it is meeting and joy.'

Tears nevertheless were not wanting in the eyes of both the good ladies--tears of happiness, however, which were quickly wiped away.

'How well you are looking--not a day older,' said the niece.

'And you, my Elsa--how well _you_ look. A trifle stouter perhaps, but that is an improvement. You have always been too thin, my child,' said the aunt, fondly patting Fraulein's shoulders, though she had to reach up to do so. Then she moved quickly to Leonore with a little exclamation of apology.

'And I have not yet welcomed our guest. Welcome to Dorf, my Fraulein--a thousand times welcome, and may you be as happy here as the old aunt will wish to make you.'

Leonore had been standing by eyeing the aunt and niece with the greatest interest. It amused her much to hear her governess spoken to as 'my child,' for to _her_ Fraulein seemed quite old, long past the age of thinking _how_ old she was. Indeed, the white-haired little lady did not seem to her much older!

'Thank you,' she said in reply to the aunt's kind words. 'I hope I shall be very happy here, but please don't call me anything but Leonore.'

'As you please,' her new friend replied, while Fraulein smiled beamingly. She was most anxious that her aunt and her pupil should make friends, and she knew that, though Leonore was a polite and well-mannered little girl, she had likes and dislikes of her own, and not always quite reasonable ones. Perhaps, to put it shortly, she felt anxious that her charge was just a trifle spoilt, and that she herself had had a hand in the spoiling.

'A motherless child,' she had said to herself many and many a time in excuse during the five years she had had the care of Leonore, for Fraulein had gone to her when the little girl was only four years old, 'and her papa so far away! Who could be severe with her?'

Not tender-hearted Fraulein Elsa, most certainly!

So she felt especially delighted when Leonore replied so prettily to her aunt, and still more so when the child lifted up her face for the kiss of welcome which Aunt Anna was only too ready to bestow, though she would have been rather surprised had she known the thoughts that were in Leonore's head at the moment.

'I believe she _does_ know something about fairies,' the little girl was saying to herself. 'She has nice twinkly eyes, and--oh, I don't know what makes me think so, but I believe she _does_ understand about them.

Any way, she won't be like my aunts in England who always want me to read improving books and say I am getting too big for fairy stories.'

That first evening in the quaint old village was full of interest for Leonore. Aunt Anna's house in itself was charming to her, for though really small as to the size and number of its rooms, it did not seem so.

There were such nice 'twisty' pa.s.sages, and funny short flights of steps, each leading perhaps to only one room, or even to nothing more than a landing with a window.

And, standing at one of these, the little girl made a grand discovery, which took her flying off to the room where Fraulein was busily unpacking the boxes which the carrier had already brought.

'Fraulein, Fraulein,' she cried; 'I've been looking out at the back of the house, and just across the yard there's a lovely sort of big courtyard and buildings round it, and I saw a man all white and powdery carrying sacks. Is there a mill here?'

'Yes, my dear,' Fraulein replied. 'Did I not tell you? It is a very old mill, and the same people have had it for nearly a hundred years--such nice people too. I will take you all over it in a day or two--it will amuse you to see the different kinds of grain and flour, all so neatly arranged.'

'And the same people have been there for nearly a hundred years!'

exclaimed Leonore. 'How _very_ old they must be.'

Fraulein laughed. Though Leonore was so fond of wonders and fancies, she was sometimes very matter-of-fact. Aunt Anna, who just then joined them, smiled kindly.

'Elsa did not mean the same _persons_,' she explained, 'but the same family--the same name. Those there now--the miller himself--is the great-grandson of the man who was there first when the mill was built, which was, I think, fully _more_ than a hundred years ago,' she added, turning to her niece.

Leonore looked rather disappointed.

'Oh,' she said, 'I thought it would be so nice to see people who were a hundred. Then, I suppose, the people here aren't any older than anywhere else.'

'I can scarcely say that,' Aunt Anna replied. 'There are some very old, and--there are odd stories about a few of the aged folk. I know one or two who do not seem to have grown any older since _I_ can remember, and my memory goes back a good way now. But, my dears, I came to tell you that supper is ready--we must not let it get cold.'

She held out her hand to Leonore as she spoke. The little girl took it, and went off with her very happily, Fraulein calling after them that she would follow immediately.