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Updated: May 28, 2025
And as soon as I saw him I loved him, and let him see it, and that is what is making me so unhappy, so unhappy that I feel as if I must die of it!" "You never saw him before yesterday?" screamed Beret, so astonished that she could hardly believe it. "Never in my life!" replied Mildrid. "Isn't it shameful, Beret?"
Excited Mildrid was already, but now she got frightened too. Beret's great eyes, as she asked: "What do you think father and mother will say to this?" seemed to grow ever greater and more threatening. Surely she could never have gone off to tell them? Yet it would be just like her hasty way to think she would settle the thing at once, and bring comfort to her sister. To be sure that was it!
Then they began to grow impatient, and at last Mildrid got so excited that Beret was frightened. She tried to soothe her by reminding her that Hans was not his own master; that he had left the German gentleman two whole days to fish and shoot alone, and prepare food for himself; and that he would hardly dare to leave him a third. And Mildrid acknowledged that this might be so.
She concealed her thoughts, but when she got home to her own dear Knut, she told him how things stood at Tingvold, and added: "Our place is there now. Little Mildrid needs some one that dares to love her; pretty, sweet little child that she is!" Knut was infected by her eagerness, and the two old people packed up and went home.
Then Hans took his gun and said good-bye, whispering to Mildrid: "You may be sure I'll come soon again!" The girls walked with him as far as the soeter, and watched him, as Mildrid had done yesterday, striding away over the heather in the sunlight. They stood as long as they could see him; Mildrid, who was leaning on Inga, would not let her go; Inga felt that she did not want her to move or speak.
Mildrid gave the shortest answers possible, and when it came to sitting opposite him at the table, she could neither speak nor eat, and there was often silence between them. When she had finished he turned round his chair and filled and lit his pipe. He too was quieter now, and presently he got up. "I must be going," he said, holding out his hand, "it's a long way home from here."
By this time she was in the passage of grandmother's house; but no one in the house recognised her step. She took hold of the latch and opened the door like a different person. "Mildrid, come here!" she said; and Mildrid and her grandmother looked at each other, for that was not mother. Mildrid ran to her. What could be happening?
Old Astrid stopped her work in a fright, and asked her where in the world she had learned that. The child answered: "From you, grandmother." Knut, who was sitting in the house, laughed heartily, for he knew that Astrid had a habit of humming it when she sat at work. But they both said to little Mildrid that she must never sing it when her parents were within hearing. Like a child, she asked "Why?"
He carried her to the place where she had sat at first, and sat down there with her on his knee. She did not unloose her arms, she only bent her head close down to his so as to hide her face from him. He was just going to force her to let him look into it, when some one right in front of them called in a voice of astonishment: "Mildrid!" It was Inga, who had come up after the dog.
"Mildrid is so young," said her mother; "none of us had thought of anything like this beginning with her already." "That is true enough, but to make up I am so much older," he answered; "and the housekeeping at home, in my house, is no great affair; it will not task her too hard and I have plenty of help." The parents looked at each other, at Mildrid, at him.
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