acquainted with sportsmanship
and woodcraft, and must consequently belong to some very home and
head-quarters of forest lore, and was going to be the grandest
sportsman ever heard of. "Oh, Felix!" Christlieb broke in, "how can you
say that dear little girl could ever be a sportsman? She may, perhaps,
know a good deal about that too, but I'm sure she knows a great deal
more about house-management; or how should she have dressed those dolls
for me so beautifully, and made such delightful dishes?" Thus Felix
thought the Stranger Child was a boy, and Christlieb, a girl; and those
contradictory opinions could not be reconciled.

Fran von Brakel thought it was a pity to go into nonsense of this kind
with children; but the Baron thought differently, and said: "I should
only have to follow the children into the woods, to find out what
wondrous sort of creature this is that comes to play with them; but I
can't help feeling that if I did I should spoil what is for them a
great pleasure; and for that reason I don't want to do it."

Next day, when Felix and Christlieb went off to the wood at the usual
time, they found the Stranger Child waiting for them; and, if their
play had been glorious on the former day, this day the Stranger Child
did the most miraculous things imaginable, so that Felix and Christlieb
shouted for rapture over and over again. It was delicious and most
enjoyable that, during their play, the Stranger Child talked so
prettily and comprehendingly with the trees, the bushes, the flowers,
and the brook which ran through the wood, and they all answered so
understandably that Felix and Christlieb knew everything that they
said.

The Stranger Child said to the alder-thicket, "What is it that you
black-looking folks are muttering and whispering to each other again?"
and the branches took to shaking more forcibly, and they laughed and
whispered "Ha, ha, ha! we are delighting ourselves over the charming
things that friend Morning-breeze was saying to us when he came
rustling over from the blue hills, in advance of the sunbeams. He
brought us thousands of greetings and kisses from the Golden Queen; and
plenty of wing-waftings, full of the sweetest perfume."

"Oh, silence!" the flowers broke in, interrupting the talk of the
branches. "Hold your tongues on the score of that flatterer, who is so
vain about the perfumes which his false caresses rob us of. Never mind
the thickets, children; let them lisp and whisper; look