“Oh, sir,” she said, curtsying, “I would not say that: the huntsmen would all die for you.”
“Happy Prince!” said Otto. “But although you are too courteous to avow the knowledge, you have had many opportunities of learning that I am a vain show. Only last night we heard it very clearly stated. You see the shadow flitting on this hard rock? Prince Otto, I am afraid, is but the moving shadow, and the name of the rock is Gondremark. Ah! if your friends had fallen foul of Gondremark! But happily the younger of the two admires him. And as for the old gentleman your father, he is a wise man and an excellent talker, and I would take a long wager he is honest.”
“Oh, for honest, your Highness, that he is!” exclaimed the girl. “And Fritz is as honest as he. And as for all they said, it was just talk and nonsense. When countryfolk get gossiping, they go on, I do assure you, for the fun; they don’t as much as think of what they say. If you went to the next farm, it’s my belief you would hear as much against my father.”
“Nay, nay,” said Otto, “there you go too fast. For all that was said against Prince Otto—”
“Oh, it was shameful!” cried the girl.
“Not shameful—true,” returned Otto. “Oh, yes—true. I am all they said of me—all that and worse.”
“I never!” cried Ottilia. “Is that how you do? Well, you would never be a soldier. Now if anyone accuses me, I get up and give it them. Oh, I defend myself. I wouldn’t take a fault at another person’s hands, no, not if I had it on my forehead. And that’s what you must do, if you mean to live it out. But, indeed, I never heard such nonsense. I should think you was ashamed of yourself! You’re bald, then, I suppose?”
“Oh no,” said Otto, fairly laughing. “There I acquit myself: not bald!”
“Well, and good?” pursued the girl. “Come now, you know you are good, and I’ll make you say so … Your Highness, I beg your humble pardon. But there’s no disrespect intended. And anyhow, you know you are.”
“Why, now, what am I to say?” replied Otto. “You are a cook, and excellently well you do it; I embrace the chance of thanking you for the ragout. Well now, have you not seen good food so bedevilled by unskilful cookery that no one could be brought to eat the pudding? That is me, my dear. I am full of good ingredients, but the dish is worthless. I am—I give it you in one word—sugar in the salad.”
“Well, I don’t care, you’re good,” reiterated Ottilia, a little flushed by having failed to understand.
“I will tell you one thing,” replied Otto: “You are!”
“Ah, well, that’s what they all said of you,” moralised the girl; “such a tongue to come round—such a flattering tongue!”
“Oh, you forget, I am a man of middle age,” the Prince chuckled.
“Well, to speak to you, I should think you was a boy; and Prince or no Prince, if you came worrying where I was cooking, I would pin a napkin to your tails. … And, O Lord, I declare I hope your Highness will forgive me,” the girl added. “I can’t keep it in my mind.”
“No more can I,” cried Otto. “That is just what they complain of!”
They made a loverly-looking couple; only the heavy pouring of that horsetail of water made them raise their voices above lovers’ pitch. But to a jealous onlooker from above, their mirth and close proximity might easily give umbrage; and a rough voice out of a tuft of brambles began calling on Ottilia by name. She changed colour at that. “It is Fritz,” she said. “I must go.”
“Go, my dear, and I need not bid you go in peace, for I think you have discovered that I am not formidable at close quarters,” said the Prince, and made her a fine gesture of dismissal.
So Ottilia skipped up the bank, and disappeared into the thicket, stopping once for a single blushing bob—blushing, because she had in the interval once more forgotten and remembered the stranger’s quality.
Otto returned to his rock promontory; but his humour had in the meantime changed. The sun now shone more fairly on the pool; and over its brown, welling surface, the blue of heaven and the golden green of the spring foliage danced in fleeting arabesque. The eddies laughed and brightened with essential colour. And the beauty of the dell began to rankle in the Prince’s mind; it was so near to his own borders, yet without. He had never had much of the joy of possessorship in any of the thousand and one beautiful and curious things that were his; and now he was conscious of envy for what was another’s. It was, indeed, a smiling, dilettante sort of envy; but yet there it was: the passion of Ahab for the vineyard, done in little; and he was relieved when Mr. Killian appeared upon the scene.
“I hope, sir, that you have slept well under my plain roof,” said the old farmer.
“I am admiring this sweet spot that you are privileged to dwell in,” replied Otto, evading the inquiry.
“It is rustic,” returned Mr. Gottesheim, looking around him with complacency, “a very rustic corner; and some of the land to the west is most excellent fat land, excellent deep soil. You should see my wheat in the ten-acre field. There is not
