“One cannot be very angry with her,” answered the old lady, as she gave her husband an approving smile.

That instant the door flew open, and a fair girl, of wondrous beauty, sprang laughing in, and said, “You have only been making a mock of me, father; for where now is the guest you mentioned?”

The same moment, however, she perceived the knight also, and continued standing before the young man in fixed astonishment.  Huldbrand was charmed with her graceful figure, and viewed her lovely features with the more intense interest, as he imagined it was only her surprise that allowed him the opportunity, and that she would soon turn away from his gaze with increased bashfulness.  But the event was the very reverse of what he expected; for, after looking at him for a long while, she became more confident, moved nearer, knelt down before him, and while she played with a gold medal which he wore attached to a rich chain on his breast, exclaimed,

“Why, you beautiful, you kind guest! how have you reached our poor cottage at last?  Have you been obliged for years and years to wander about the world before you could catch one glimpse of our nook?  Do you come out of that wild forest, my beautiful knight?”

The old woman was so prompt in her reproof as to allow him no time to answer.  She commanded the maiden to rise, show better manners, and go to her work.  But Undine, without making any reply, drew a little footstool near Huldbrand’s chair, sat down upon it with her netting, and said in a gentle tone—­

“I will work here.”

The old man did as parents are apt to do with children to whom they have been over-indulgent.  He affected to observe nothing of Undine’s strange behaviour, and was beginning to talk about something else.  But this the maiden did not permit him to do.  She broke in upon him, “I have asked our kind guest from whence he has come among us, and he has not yet answered me.”

“I come out of the forest, you lovely little vision,” Huldbrand returned; and she spoke again: 

“You must also tell me how you came to enter that forest, so feared and shunned, and the marvellous adventures you met with in it; for there is no escaping without something of this kind.”

Huldbrand felt a slight shudder on remembering what he had witnessed, and looked involuntarily toward the window, for it seemed to him that one of the strange shapes which had come upon him in the forest must be there grinning in through the glass; but he discerned nothing except the deep darkness of night, which had now enveloped the whole prospect.  Upon this he became more collected, and was just on the point of beginning his account, when the old man thus interrupted him: 

“Not so, sir knight; this is by no means a fit hour for such relations.”

But Undine, in a state of high excitement, sprang up from her little stool and cried, placing herself directly before the fisherman:  “He shall not tell his story, father? he shall not?  But it is my will:—­ he shall!—­stop him who may!”