And John echoed his father. "Upon my word, Wilhelm, you are a good
actor. Why have you kept your light under a bushel so long?" And John
looked at him with a new interest and liking. If this were the true
Wilhelm, he might welcome him indeed as a brother.
Carlen alone looked grave, anxious, unhappy. She could not laugh. Tale
after tale, jest after jest, fell from Wilhelm's lips. Such a
story-teller never before sat at the Weitbreck board. The old kitchen
never echoed with such laughter.
Finally John exclaimed: "Man alive, where have you kept yourself all
this time? Have you been ill till now, that you hid your tongue? What
has cured you in a day?"
Wilhelm laughed a laugh so ringing, it made him seem like a boy.
"Yes, I have been ill till to-day," he said; "and now I am well." And he
rattled on again, with his merry talk.
Carlen grew cold with fear; surely this meant but one thing. Nothing
else, nothing less, could have thus in an hour rolled away the burden of
his sadness.
Later in the evening she said timidly, "Did you hear any news in the
village this afternoon, Wilhelm?"
"No; no news," he said.
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