, Annabella! How could you
run away? Do you think you can see better out of the corner?

_Annabella._ Is this indeed our papa? What, in the name of mercy, can
have given him so dark a colour? I hope I shall never be like that;
and yet everybody tells me I am very like papa.

_Wilhelm._ Do not let her plague you, papa; but take me between your
knees (I am too old to sit upon them), and tell me all about the
Turks, and how you ran away from them.

_Countess._ Wilhelm! if your father had run away from the enemy, we
should not have been deprived of him two whole years.

_Wilhelm._ I am hardly such a child as to suppose that a Christian
knight would run away from a rebel Turk in battle. But even Christians
are taken, somehow, by their tricks and contrivances, and their dog
Mahomet. Beside, you know you yourself told me, with tear after tear,
and scolding me for mine, that papa was taken by them.

_Annabella._ Neither am I, who am only one year younger, so foolish as
to believe there is any dog Mahomet. And, if there were, we have dogs
that are better and faithfuller and stronger.

_Wilhelm._ [_To his father._] I can hardly help laughing to think what
curious fancies girls have about Mahomet. We know that Mahomet is a
dog-spirit with three horsetails.

_Annabella._ Papa! I am glad to see you smile at Wilhelm. I do assure
you he is not half so bad a boy as he was, although he did point at
me, and did tell you some mischief.

_Count._ I ought to be indeed most happy at seeing you all again.

_Annabella._ And so you are. Don't pretend to look grave now. I very
easily find you out. I often look grave when I am the happiest. But
forth it bursts at last: there is no room for it in tongue, or eyes,
or anywhere.

_Count._ And so, my little angel, you begin to recollect me.

_Annabella._ At first I used to dream of papa, but at last I forgot
how to dream of him: and then I cried, but at last I left off crying.
And then, papa, who could come to me in my sleep, seldom came again.

_Count._ Why do you now draw back from me, Annabella?

_Annabella._ Because you really are so very very brown: just like
those ugly Turks who sawed the pines in the saw-pit under the wood,
and who refused to drink wine in the heat of summer, when Wilhelm and
I brought it to them. Do not be angry; we did it only once.

_Wilhelm._ Because one of them stamped and frightened her when the
other seemed to bless us.

_Count._ Are they still living?