Malla Trap was then a friend of old standing; some, indeed, of the older generation declared that Holm in his young days had been in love with his master's daughter, but that the old patrician would not hear of the match.
However this might be, Malla Trap was a regular visitor at the Holms', and as far back as the children could remember, Aunt Trap had always come round to dinner every Sunday, where a special place was laid for her at table.
She was now about sixty, tall, thin, and with greyish hair that hung in two heavy curls on either side of her forehead.
But Malla Trap was no ordinary old maid with black crochet mittens and knitting-needle, sitting roasting apples over a stove in an over-heated room.
No; on a fine winter's day, with clean, smooth ice across the fjord, one might see Malla Trap's slender figure skimming along on skates as gaily as any girl of seventeen.
She had a splendid constitution and physique—weakness was a thing unknown to her. And she had carefully hardened herself from youth up, for she had a dread of becoming old and invalid.
As an instance of her prowess of endurance it was stated as a reliable fact that she had set out one bitterly cold morning to skate across the fjord, and, falling through a patch of thin ice a couple of miles out, had not only managed to extricate herself, but instead of making at once for home, continued on her way to Strandvik. There, arriving at the house of her old friend Prois, she declared she was frozen so stiff that anyone might have broken her across the middle like a sugar-stick.
A slight cold was the sole effect of her bath, which otherwise seemed to have been merely refreshing!
She had always had leisure and means to arrange her mode of life as she pleased, and had made the most of her opportunities in that direction. Her whole existence was conducted in a casual, easy-going fashion, not tied down to habit, rule and order.
Her idea of charity, and manner of exercising the same, were no less eccentric.