“You know, David,” he said, “there are good girls and beautiful girls that look kindly on you, and who wonder that your smiles are so cold and your words so few; and it is my duty to say to you that evil may come of your taking so much thought for your cousin and her child, and the way to help her best is to help her through your own wife.”
“I am not in the mind to marry, minister,” he answered. “There is no one girl dearer or fairer to me than another. And as for what I do for my cousins, I think that God sent me to do it, and I shall not be feared to make accounting to him for it.”
“That is my belief also, David. Yet we are told to avoid the very appearance of evil; and what is more, if it is not your pleasure to marry, it is your duty; and how will you win past that?”
“I have not seen it to be my duty, minister.”
“The promise is in the line of the righteous; the blessing is for you and for your children; but if you have no wife or children, then is the promise shortened and the blessing cut off. I think that you should choose some good woman’s daughter, and build yourself a home, and then marry a wife.”
The young man went out of the manse with this thought in his heart. And not far off he met pretty Asta Fae, and he spoke to her and walked with her as far as she was going; and he saw that she had the sweetest of blue eyes, and that her smile was tender and her ways gentle. And when he left her at her father’s door, he held her hand a moment and said, “It has been a pleasant walk to me, Asta.” And she looked frankly into his face and answered with rosy blushes, “And to me also, David.”
There was a warm glow at his heart as he went across the moor to Nanna’s; and he resolved to tell his cousin what the minister had said, and ask her advice about Asta Fae; but when he reached Nanna’s cot she was sitting on the hearth with Vala upon her knees, and telling her such a strange story that David would not for anything lose a word of it. And as Nanna’s back was to the open door she did not see David enter, but went on with her tale, in the high, monotonous tone of one telling a narrative whose every word is well known and not to be changed.
“You see, Vala,” she said, touching the child’s fingers and toes, “it was the old brown bull of Norraway, and he had a sore battle with the deil, and he carried off a great princess; and you may know how big he was, for he said to her, ‘Eat out of my left ear, and drink out of my right ear, and put by the leavings.’ And ay they rode, and on they rode, till they came to a dark and awesome glen, and there the bull stopped and the lady lighted down. And the bull said to her: ‘Here you must stay while I go on and fight the deil. And you must sit here on that stone, and move not hand or foot till I come back, or else I’ll never find you again. And if everything round about you turns blue, I shall have beaten the deil; but if all things turn red, then the deil will have conquered me.’”
“And so he left her, mammy, to go and fight the deil?”
“Ay, he did, Vala; and she sat still, singing.”