When, eventually, the time for starting came, Fru Boyesen wished she had never thought of letting Ragna go out from under her control. "Else Bjork is too soft, she will spoil her," she thought, "and the girl will come back worse than when she left. I have been criminally weak with her, but she'll ride roughshod over poor Else!"
As the luggage was being carried out of the house, an impulse seized her to have it brought back again; then she chid herself for her inconsistency.
"The little minx has upset me entirely! This is the first time in my life I haven't known my own mind!" Therefore to hide the sinking of heart she felt at the prospect of imminent loneliness, she assumed such a stern and forbidding aspect that half Christiania, assembled to see the party off, was certain that Ragna was being banished for some heinous offence.
Ragna kissed her Aunt good-bye with a light heart,—was she not faring forth to the land of her dreams?—And the separation would be but for a few months.
When Ingeborg received her sister's letter announcing the prospective journey, she burst into tears, much to the amazement of the family.
"Ragna is going, we shall never see her again!" she sobbed.
Lars Andersen reproved her sternly.
"Stop this nonsense, Ingeborg!" he ordered, "I will have none of this foolish superstition in my house. The future rests with God."
But though he spoke boldly, yet his heart sank. Ingeborg's predictions had a strange way of coming true.