when we have a stranger knight with us in the cottage?"

All without now became still, only a low laugh was just audible, and
the fisherman said, as he came back to his seat, "You will have the
goodness, my honoured guest, to pardon this freak, and it may be a
multitude more; but she has no thought of evil or of any harm. This
mischievous Undine, to confess the truth, is our adopted daughter,
and she stoutly refuses to give over this frolicsome childishness of
hers, although she has already entered her eighteenth year. But in
spite of this, as I said before, she is at heart one of the very best
children in the world."

"YOU may say so," broke in the old lady, shaking her head; "you can
give a better account of her than I can. When you return home from
fishing, or from selling your fish in the city, you may think her
frolics very delightful, but to have her dancing about you the whole
day long, and never from morning to night to hear her speak one word
of sense; and then as she grows older, instead of having any help
from her in the family, to find her a continual cause of anxiety,
lest her wild humours should completely ruin us, that is quite
another thing, and enough at last to weary out the patience even of
a saint."

"Well, well," replied the master of the house with a smile, "you have
your trials with Undine, and I have mine with the lake. The lake
often beats down my dams, and breaks the meshes of my nets, but for
all that I have a strong affection for it, and so have you, in spite
of your mighty crosses and vexations, for our graceful little child.
Is it not true?"