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Updated: May 28, 2025
Hans gave a start, held his gun in readiness, and hurried on. Mildrid was still gazing at the place where he had stood, when a shot startled her. Could that be the bear? Could it have been so near her?
"Beret, Beret!" moaned Mildrid; "have I ever been anything but kind to you since you were a little child. Why are you so cruel to me now that I am in trouble?" Then Beret, moved by her tears, let go her arms; but her short hard breathing still betrayed her excitement. "Is it Hans Haugen?" she whispered.
There is no more to tell till Mildrid was in her fifteenth year; then old Knut died, suddenly and easily. There seemed almost no time between the day when he sat joking in the chimney-corner and the day when he lay in his coffin.
The steady, gentle Mildrid, for whose careful ways and whose obedience they had so often thanked God, had, without asking their advice, without their knowledge, taken life's most important step, a step that was also decisive for their past and future. Mildrid felt each thought along with them, and fear stopped her crying. Her father asked gently and slowly: "To whom, my child?"
When it came to supper-time, and Mildrid, instead of taking her place at the table, went and sat down outside, saying that she had just had dinner, Beret was as intensely on the alert as a dog who scents game at hand. She took her supper and went to bed.
And the mother especially began to feel that she had perhaps been too hard with her. While the young man was telling about Mildrid, he was telling too, without being aware of it, about himself; for his love to Mildrid showed clearly in every word, and made her parents glad.
Mildrid felt that this was true, and at the same time that it was not true, but she could not put her feeling into words. Her mother went on: "Of what good has it all been, the love that we have shown our children, and the fear of God that we have taught them? In the first temptation " for her daughter's sake she could say no more. But Mildrid could bear it no longer.
It went first by the edge of a wood, and then higher over bare flats, not quite safe from wild animals, which she knew had been seen there lately. But she went on, for Hans really must come. If he did not, she was sure things would go badly with Mildrid; she seemed so changed to-day.
But Beret threw her arms round her sister's neck, and kissed her over and over again. "Dear, sweet Mildrid, I'm so glad!" she whispered, now radiant with joy. "I'm so glad, so glad!" and she kissed her once more. "And you'll see how I can keep a secret, Mildrid!"
When a girl between the age of twelve and sixteen takes a sister between seven and eleven into her full confidence, the confidence is rewarded by great devotion. But the little one is apt to become too old for her years. This happened with Beret, while Mildrid only gained by being forbearing and kind and sympathetic and she made her parents and grandparents happy.
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