"Because you are an unilluminated botanical duffer!" answered Tante.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
Katharine lingered a little while longer at the Skyds-station to comfort, by her sympathetic presence, the brother and friend of the dead Englishman. To the end of their lives they remembered her ministration. She gave out to them royally in generous fashion. It was nothing to her that they were strangers; it was everything to her that they were in trouble and needed a little human kindness. They themselves had forgotten that they were strangers to her. It was a pathetic tribute to her powers of sympathy that they both spoke of the dead man as if she had known him.
"You remember," the brother said, "he never did care for fishing. It always bored him, didn't it?"
"Yes," said Katharine gently.
"Do you remember him saying a few years ago," the friend said, "that he should love to die on the mountains? He always loved the mountains."
"Yes," said Katharine gently.
She scarcely had the heart to leave them; but at last she rose to go, telling them there was an Englishman at the Solli Gaard who spoke Norwegian well, and who would come to help them.
"He is the one for whom we came to seek here," she said, looking away from them. "We are not yet sure that he is safe; but if he comes down from the mountains, I know he will hasten to help you about——"
They bowed their heads silently as she broke off.