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There was so much work to be done, though, in discharging the cargo and getting the vessel into dock for repairs they had managed to get her up as far as Arendal that it would be Saturday evening before he could get his so longed-for home-leave.
They were hailed shortly after by a pilot boat from Arendal, and he arrived there after dark the same evening, and went to Madam Gjers's unpretending lodging-house until the morning. The following day was Sunday.
It was dreadful weather yesterday, Salvé; so I was a little anxious," she continued, as she helped him off with his wet oilskin coverings. "I have done well, Elizabeth," he said, looking pleased. "On the galliot?" "Yes, and I had a little matter to arrange in Arendal, which kept me there till after midday." "You saw Gjert, then?" "I did." He looked a little impatiently towards the door.
When Madame Beck suggested Elizabeth he eagerly assented; but the colour rushed into Elizabeth's cheeks, and with an angry toss of her head, which she didn't make any attempt to conceal, she left the room. As he was standing alone outside some little time after, she came up to him, and said, looking him straight in the face "I don't go into Arendal with you, Herr Beck."
Gjert was now ten years old; and whilst his father was sitting over his glass in Mother Andersen's parlour, he used generally to amuse himself out in the harbour with a number of the Arendal boys with whom he had struck up an acquaintanceship, and who understood very little about differences of social position.
An idea that it might be Elizabeth had shot through him, and he could not divest himself of it, although the more he reflected the more certain he knew he ought to be that she had been married long ago to young Beck. His mind was in a ferment, and a wild longing now possessed him to get home to Arendal and find out for certain how matters actually stood.
Day broke and passed in a fog, that left them in much the same uncertainty as before about their position. For one moment it had lifted, and they fancied they had seen "Homborgsund's Fald," a high landmark up the country above Arendal, and from its lowness and dimness on the horizon, they had been encouraged to hope that they had appreciably increased their distance from the coast.
Elizabeth used to talk to them as countrymen of her own; and if she heard that any of them had been across the Atlantic, she would quietly, and as if quite casually, ask if perchance they had come across or had heard anything of a sailor of her acquaintance called Salvé Kristiansen who hailed from Arendal.
"I promised you yesterday, my boy, that you should go to your mother in Arendal. I daresay she is wanting to see you." "If mother is not ill I had rather stay here with you, father, until you go in to see her yourself. She has Henrik with her." "You would?" said his father, in a rather toneless voice, and looking at him as if some new idea had been suggested to him by the boy's reply.
"Next week, then, I'll write from Arendal and tell my father, and then let my stepmother know what I have written. Are you offended, Elizabeth dear Elizabeth? or shall I do it at once?" he broke out resolutely, and seized her hand again.
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