Through the roof where there were broken tiles, a sunbeam broke here and there, and drew a long, glowing streak aslant down through the air, and fixed a round sun-spot on the floor.
The sparrows which had had their nests up there, still maintained a sinful life, with battles and bickerings. From the passage near by, came the rapid beating of the paddles which made the bricks smooth before they dried; far in the distance a lusty young fellow was singing a mournful love ditty as he worked; and through it all the big water-wheel went on splashing, patiently and monotonously, and drove the mills so they creaked.
Elsie heard voices and turned curiously into a side passage; there were three young boys shaping brick. Her eyes at once fixed themselves on the one who stood at the moulding-table and pressed the brick into the moulds.
He might have been nineteen or twenty years old, with coal-black hair, a little curly about the ears, eye-brows large and rather heavy; but when he now glanced up from his work he fixed a pair of dark, almost black eyes on Elsie.
She looked away and colored. Never in her life, thought she, had she seen anything so handsome. He had a little, dark down under the nose; else the mouth could as well have been a girl’s mouth, so red and tender was it.
Elsie at once thought it was the mouth she had dreamed about all day.
She went a step beyond the passage; but turned and drew near again on tip-toe. Then she heard some one in the side passage saying:
“By George, you must know her, Svend! She blushed so when she saw you.”
Svend smiled; she could just see his mouth through the piles of brick. Then he wiped his forehead with his bare arms, and so besmeared himself worse with clay, and said:
“That was a deuce of a pretty woman.”