wooers flocked on her path. Bjarne shook
his head at her, and often had harsh words
upon his lips, when he saw her braiding field-
flowers into her yellow tresses or clasping the
shining brooches to her bodice; but a look
of hers or a smile would completely disarm
him. She had a merry way of doing things
which made it all seem like play; but work went
rapidly from her hands, while her ringing laughter
echoed through the house, and her sunny
presence made it bright in the dusky ancestral
halls. In her kitchen the long rows of copper
pots and polished kettles shone upon the walls,
and the neatly scoured milk-pails stood like
soldiers on parade about the shelves under the
ceiling. Bjarne would often sit for hours watching
her, and a strange spring-feeling would steal
into his heart. He felt a father's pride in her
stately growth and her rich womanly beauty.
"Ah!" he would say to himself, "she has the
pure blood in her veins and, as true as I live,
the farm shall be hers." And then, quite
contrary to his habits, he would indulge in a little
reverie, imagining the time when he, as an
aged man, should have given the estate over
into her hands, and seeing her as a worthy matron
preside at the table, and himself rocking
his grandchildren on his knee. No wonder,
then, that he eyed closely the young lads who
were beginning to hover about the house, and