"There, there! Control yourself my dear, recollect that you are almost a woman now!" And he closed the door behind her.
CHAPTER II
The next few weeks passed as in a dream, and at length the day of departure came. Ragna set off with her father in the stulkjarre, her modest box well corded and tied on behind. Grandmother, mother and sisters, even the old nurse, waving a tearful farewell, disappeared behind the clustering trees.
Travel in those days was not the easy affair it is now, and three days posting lay between the travellers and Molde. They were to meet Fru Bjork at Bergen. When, in due time they arrived, Ragna found her chaperone to be a matronly woman, arrayed in brown silk with a heavy gold chain round her neck; her crab's eyes looked good-naturedly out on the world, and her ample curves bore witness to her naturally placid temperament—relieved, however, by a surface fussiness. She at once took Ragna to her arms and heart with such pattings and caressings as made the girl feel quite uncomfortable, unused as she was to such a demonstrative show of affection.
Astrid, the daughter, fair and pretty, sprightly and capricious of character, also welcomed the newcomer with enthusiasm.
"How delightful it will be!" she carolled. "We shall be just like sisters, and tell one another all our secrets—shan't we, dear?" She linked her arm in Ragna's, and gazed soulfully into her face. Ragna could not help wondering what secrets she might ever find it possible to confide to such a little linnet. At first awkward and constrained, she soon thawed, however, in the friendly atmosphere, and in a few minutes was chattering away with a gaiety and freedom, quite surprising to her father, who had always known her timidly reserved. This was not to be wondered at, as he had never encouraged any other attitude in his children.
As this is not to be a chronicle of a young lady's school-days, little need be told concerning the journey to Paris, and the years at the Sacré Cœur, suffice it to say that Ragna, under the care of the good Sisters, improved both in mind and body. As her skin lost its coating of sunburn and tan, and her body its abrupt and boyish movements, so her mind, trained in the study of the French classics, took on polish, and she acquired a nice discrimination of taste, and a distinction of manner rarely met with in so young a girl. So much for externals, at heart she was the same old Ragna, impulsive, dreamy, and of a childlike credulity, splendidly loyal to those she loved. One instance of this will suffice.
Astrid, in whom vanity and the indulgence of her mother had developed a thirst for admiration and romance, soon found the monotonous round of convent life unbearably dull. She confided the yearnings of her lonely heart to her bosom friend Ragna, and for a time these confidences, the daily bulletins as to the state of her soul scribbled in pencil on scraps of paper, and passed from one to the other as the girls met going to and from chapel, or in recreation hours, sufficed.
Shortly after their arrival, they had been sent to separate dormitories and tables, and kept apart during recreation, the Convent discipline not permitting of too close an intimacy between two young girls, and there being the added reason of the more rapid progress made in acquiring the language when neither had the occasion to use her mother tongue.