"I think you have had a great many of these headaches lately, Fanny; you ought to speak to the doctor."
"It is no use," answered Fanny, endeavouring to cool her forehead by pressing a little hand-glass against it. "The only thing that does me any good is fresh air and perfect quiet. Oh, the noise here from the street is dreadful! To think that I have to spend the whole evening in a hot room! I can't bear it; it will be too much for me!"
"You shan't go out at all when you are so unwell," said Madeleine, decidedly. "I will make such a nice excuse for you."
"Oh, if I could only stop at home, or, even better still, if I could get to Sandsgaard; it is so quiet there!" said Fanny, with a sigh.
"Yes, that is just what you shall do," cried Madeleine. "You take the carriage when it has left me, and drive out there. I believe it is clearing up, and we shall have a lovely quiet moonlight evening."
"Yes; I don't much mind what the weather is," said Fanny, with a sickly smile. "But do you think it will do for me--"
"You need not trouble about that. I will make such charming and plausible excuses for you, that you will really feel quite rewarded for all the trouble you have had in teaching me the ways of society. Look now, I will begin like this;" and Madeleine, who had now got on her dress, curtsied and smiled, and began a most pathetic story about dear Fanny's dreadful headache. Fanny began to laugh, until it gave her head so much pain that she could not help crying out. She, however, allowed herself to be persuaded, and Madeleine drove off alone.
Madeleine now began to find herself at home in her new life. Fanny was so good and kind to her, that the young girl at last got the better of her shyness, and told her friend the whole story about Per, and the rest of her doings at home.
Fanny did not laugh at her in the least; on the contrary, she said that she quite envied Madeleine the romantic little episode, which would be a sweet recollection for the rest of her life. But when Madeleine timidly said that she considered it more than a recollection, and that she regarded herself as really engaged, she met with such a determined opposition that she did not know what to think. "Young girls, often have these absurd adventures," said Fanny, "when they are not old enough to know better." She had herself been madly in love with a chimney-sweep--a common chimney-sweep, just think of that!
The more Madeleine became accustomed to town life the easier she found it to deaden her recollections of the past. But however successful she was in burying them out of sight for the time, they would recur whenever she was alone. But she refused to listen to them; they could never become realities. Still, she never cared to go home to Bratvold with her father, even for a few days. She seemed to dread looking on the sea again.