One day Harald showed me how to plant pine cones and little bushes. I'd no
idea of that sort of work before; we didn't learn it in the days when I
was at school. But now I'd seen the way of it, I went about planting
busily on Sundays; and, in return, I taught Harald one or two little
things that were new to him at his age, and got to be friends with him.




VIII


And all might have been well if it had not been for Frokenen, the daughter
of the house. I grew fonder of her every day. Her name was Elischeba,
Elisabeth. No remarkable beauty, perhaps; but she had red lips, and a
blue, girlish glance that made her pretty to see. Elischeba, Elisabeth--a
child at the first dawn of life, with eyes looking out upon the world. She
spoke one evening with young Erik from the neighbouring _gaard_, and
her eyes were full of sweetness and of something ripening.

It was all very well for Grindhusen. He had gone ravening after the girls
when he was young, and he still spanked about with his hat on one side,
out of habit. But he was quiet and tame enough now, as well he might
be--'tis nature's way. But some there are who would not follow nature's
way, and be tamed; and how shall it fare with them at last? And then there
was little Elisabeth; and she was none so little after all, but as tall as
her mother. And she'd her mother's high breast.

Since that first Sunday they had not asked me in to coffee in the kitchen,