“At the harbour mouth he might be, even this very minute. I want to see my boy. I love him. May the good God send those together who would fain be loved!”
“Boris is in command of his own ship. He was under no man’s orders. He ought not to break his promise.”
“With my will, he would never do that.”
“Dost thou think he will go to the war with the other men?”
“That he might do. What woman is there who can read a man’s heart?”
“His mother!”
“She might, a little way––no further––just as well ‘no further.’ Only God is wise enough, and patient enough, to read a human heart. This is a great mercy.” And Rahal lifted her face from her sewing a moment and then dropped it again.
Almost in a whisper Sunna said “Good-bye!” and then went her way home. She walked rapidly; 133 she was in a passion of grief and mortification, but she sang some lilting song along the highway. As soon, however, as she passed inside the Vedder garden gates, the singing was changed into a scornful, angry monologue:
“These Ragnor women! Oh, their intolerable good sense! So easy it is to talk sweetly and properly when you have no great trouble and all your little troubles are well arranged! Women cannot comfort women. No, they can not! They don’t want to, if they could. Like women, I do not! Trust them, I do not! I wish that God had made me a man! I will go to my dear old grandad!––He will do something––so sorry I am that I let Thora see I loved her brother––when I go there again, I shall consider his name as the bringer-on of yawns and boredom!”
An angry woman carries her heart in her mouth; but Sunna had been trained by a wise old man, and no one knew better than Sunna Vedder did, when to speak and when to be silent. She went first to her room in order to repair those disturbances to her appearance which had been induced by her inward heat and by her hurried walk home so near the noontide; and half an hour later she came down to dinner fresh and cool as 134 a rose washed in the dew of the morning. Her frock of muslin was white as snow, there was a bow of blue ribbon at her throat, her whole appearance was delightfully satisfying. She opened her grandfather’s parlour and found him sitting at a table covered with papers and little piles of gold and silver coin.