He broke off again, and turned to her with a pathetic smile on his face.
"Speech has never been easy to me," he said.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
BEDSTEFAR'S FUNERAL.
The day before Bedstefar's funeral Jens and Alan came down from the mountain-lake laden with nearly two hundred pounds of trout, and the cotters' children finished their task of bringing in all the multebaer they could find; for no Norwegian entertainment, taking place at this season of the year, would have been considered complete without this much-loved fruit; and certainly it would seem that multebaer had a softening effect on the strange and somewhat hard Norwegian temperament. As Tante said, from her own personal observations of the previous days, multebaer spelt magic!
"Ibsen has not done justice to his country," she told Gerda. "He ought at least once to have described them as being under the influence of these berries. Then a softer side of their nature would have been made apparent to all. Why, the Sorenskriver himself becomes a woolly lamb as he bends over his plate of cloudberries-and-cream. He ought to have his photograph taken. No one would recognise him, and that is what photographs are for!"
They all helped to decorate the Gaard inside and out with branches of firs and birches. Bedstefar's black house was decorated too, and the whole courtyard was covered with sprigs of juniper and fir. A beautiful arch of fir and birch was raised over the white gate through which he would pass for the last time on his way down to the old church in the valley.
Katharine, together with Ragnhild and Ingeborg, spent many hours making strips of wreathing from twigs of the various berry-shrubs up in the woods. Karl used these for lettering; so that stretched from side to side of the arch ran the words, "Farvel, kjaere Bedstefar."
When he had finished, every one came out to see his work, and Mor Inga, turning to Tante, said proudly:
"My Karl is clever, isn't he?"
And she whispered: