In a word, Peter Oiland was desperately in love, while Andrea, who had never before been the object of such attentions, began to lie awake at nights wondering whether he "really meant it." The solution, however, came quite naturally.
Andrea played the piano, and sang touching little songs of the sentimental type, such as "When my eyes are closing," "The Last Rose of Summer," or "The Deserted Cottage"—which transported Peter Oiland to the eighth heaven at least. One evening, when she had finished one of her usual turns, he took her hand and thanked her warmly, pressing it also quite perceptibly—and Andrea, well, she somehow managed to press his quite perceptibly in return—by accident, of course. And then these hand-clasps were repeated, nay, became a regular thing, to such an extent that the pair would press each other's hands when seated on the sofa with Mamma Sukkestad between them. That good lady, however, did not notice, or affected not to notice, these evidences of tender passion taking place behind her back.
Thanks to his intimacy with Sukkestad, and also to his own reputation as a sober and earnest man, Peter Oiland was chosen, after only a couple of months' residence in the place, as one of the two representatives of the town to attend the mission meeting at Stavanger. Sukkestad himself was the other.
On the evening before their departure, he was invited to a party at the Sukkestads', together with the members of the Women's Union.
Peter Oiland had already succeeded in making himself a special favourite with Mrs. Sukkestad, and was on very confidential terms with her; relations, indeed, became quite intimate, when Andrea confided the secret of their mutual feelings to her mother.
After supper, preserved fruit and pastry were handed round, which Peter Oiland inwardly considered a somewhat insipid form of entertainment. He had often felt the lack of a glass of grog on his visits to the house, and this evening he deftly turned the conversation with Mrs. Sukkestad to the subject of "colds," from which he declared himself to be suffering considerably just lately. Mrs. Sukkestad recommended hot turpentine bandages on the chest and barley water internally. Oiland, however, hinted that the only thing he had ever known to do him any good was egg punch. Mrs. Sukkestad, who was one of those stout little homely persons always anxious to help, and with a fine store of household recipes ever available, set to work at once to find some means of getting him his favourite medicine, while Peter coughed distressingly, and screwed up his eyes behind his glasses.
"I tell you what," whispered Mrs. Sukkestad at last. "Sukkestad is an abstainer, you know, so we've never anything in the way of spirits in the house as a rule. But I've half a bottle of brandy out in the pantry that I got last spring when I was troubled with the toothache; I was going to use it for cleaning the windows, really, but if you think it would do your cold any good, I'd be only too pleased."
"Thanks ever so much, it's awfully good of you," said Peter Oiland hoarsely.
"Well, then, be sure you don't let anyone know what it is. I'll put it in one of the decanters, and say it's gooseberry wine."
"Yes, yes, of course; I understand."