Barefoot had to go out into the fields and stay there the whole day planting turnips.  At every step she hesitated and thought of going home and telling the stranger everything; but the consciousness of her subordinate position in the house, as well as a special consideration, kept her to the duty that she had been called upon to perform.

“If he is foolish and inconsiderate enough,” she soliloquized, “to rush into this affair without a thought, then there’s no helping him, and he deserves no help.  And—­” she was fain to console herself at last—­“and besides, engaged is not married anyway.”

But all day long she was restless and unhappy.  In the evening when she had returned from the fields and was milking the cows, and Rose was sitting with a full pail beside a cow that had been milked, she heard the stranger talking with Farmer Rodel in the nearby stable.  They were bargaining about a white horse.  But how came the white horse in the stable?—­until then they had had none.

“Who is that singing yonder?” the stranger now asked.

“That’s my sister,” answered the farmer.  And at the word Barefoot joined in and sang the second voice, powerfully and defiantly, as if she wanted to compel him to ask who that was over yonder.  But her singing had the disadvantage that it prevented her from hearing whether or not he did ask.  And as Rose went across the yard with her pail, where the white horse had just been led out for inspection, the farmer said: 

“There, that’s my sister.  Rose, leave your work, and get something ready for supper.  We have a relative for a guest—­I’ll bring him in presently.”

“And it was the little one yonder, who sang the second voice?” inquired the stranger.  “Is she a sister of yours, too?”

“No—­she, in a way, is an adopted child.  My father was her guardian.”  The farmer knew very well that charity of this kind conduced to the credit of a house, and he therefore avoided saying outright that Barefoot was a maid.

Barefoot felt inwardly glad that the stranger knew something about her.  “If he is wise,” she reflected, “he will be sure to ask me about Rose.  Then an opportunity will come for me to save him from a misfortune.”

Rose brought in the supper, and the stranger was quite surprised to find that such good fare could be made ready so quickly—­he did not know that it had all been prepared beforehand.  Rose apologized by asking him to make shift with their plain fare, though he was doubtless accustomed to better things at home.  She reckoned, not without acuteness, that the mention of a well-deserved fame would be gratifying to any one.

Barefoot was told to remain in the kitchen that day, and to give all the dishes into Rose’s hands.  She entreated over and over again:  “For goodness sake, tell me who he is!  What’s his name?”—­but Rose gave her no answer.  The mistress, however, at last solved the mystery by saying: