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The Thrall of Leif the Lucky by Ottilie A. (Ottilia Adelina) Liljencrantz
page 75 of 317 (23%)

Always before, Helga had taken their chaff in good part; always before,
she had joined them in making merry at her expense. But now she did not
laugh. She rose slowly and stood looking at them, her breast heaving,
her eyes like glowing coals.

At last she said shrilly, "Oh, laugh! If you see a jest in it--laugh!
Because I am going to lose my freedom--my rides over the green
country,--never to stand in the bow and feel the deck bounding under
me,--is it such sport to you, you stupid clods? Would you think it a
jest if the Franks should carry me off, and shut me up in one of their
towers, and load me with fetters, and force me to toil day and night for
them? You would take that ill enough. How much better is it that I am to
be shut in a smothering women's-house and wound around with cloth till I
trip when I walk, and made to waste the daylight, baking to fill your
swinish stomachs, and sewing tapestries that your dull eyes may have
something to look at while you swallow your ale? Clods! I had rather the
Franks took me. At least they would not call themselves my friends while
they ill-used me. Heavy-witted churls, laugh if you want to! Laugh till
you burst!"

She whirled away from them into her booth, and the door-curtain fell
behind her.

All day long she sat there, neither eating nor speaking, Editha
crouching in a corner, afraid to approach her.




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