[Illustration: THE LITTLE STRANGER.]
Margary, after she had filled her pitcher, went home also; and was
beginning to talk about the stranger to her mother, when a shadow fell
across the floor from the doorway. Margary looked up. "There he is
now!" cried she in a joyful whisper.
The pretty boy stood there indeed, looking in modestly and wishfully.
Margary's mother arose at once from her spinning-wheel, and came
forward; she was a very courteous woman. "Wilt thou enter, and rest
thyself," said she, "and have a cup of our porridge, and a slice of
our wheaten bread, and a bit of honeycomb?"
The little boy sniffed hungrily at the porridge which was just
beginning to boil; he hesitated a moment, but finally thanked the good
woman very softly and sweetly and entered.
Then Margary and her mother set a bottle of cowslip wine on the table,
slices of wheaten bread, and a plate of honeycomb, a bowl of ripe
raspberries, and a little jug of yellow cream, and another little bowl
with a garland of roses around the rim, for the porridge. Just as soon
as that was cooked, the stranger sat down, and ate a supper fit for a
prince. Margary and her mother half supposed he was one; he had such a
courtly, yet modest air.
When he had eaten his fill, and his little dog had been fed too, he
offered his entertainers some gold out of a little silk purse, but
they would not take it.
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