"Ah," whispered Mor Inga to Tante, "Kari can tell thee many stories of the Gudbrandsdal if she likes. But it must be in secret, when there is no young person near to laugh and disbelieve. One day thou shalt give her a little coffee in a packet—all for herself—and then thou wilt hear all sorts of things."
But to-day Kari only carded the wool, smiling amusedly at being in the company of the big Danish lady, who spoke to her so kindly and treated her as though she were a lady herself and not an old parish-woman who had no home of her own. Ja, ja, that was very nice, and Kari scratched her head, and smiled more and more, until even the furrows on her grim old face were filled up with smiles, and her eyes seemed almost young and very bright.
"Ah," said Tante, with a friendly nod, "I know some one who has been very pretty. Oh, I have eyes—sharp, sharp eyes. I can see!"
And Mor Inga laughed and said:
"Kari was beautiful, and she could dance too. They say that in the old days no one could dance the spring-dance like Kari."
"Nei, nei!" said Kari, smiling more and more still. And her thoughts wandered back to her Ole—dead these twenty years and more. He had always said that no one could dance like Kari.
All this kept Fröken Knudsgaard busy; and indeed her distractions increased as the days went on. Sometimes she sat in the balcony which looked over the splendid view, and, seized by a sudden enthusiasm for nature, watched the ever-changing colours of the rivers, and the shadows on the hillsides, and listened to the music of the waterfall down below in the Vinstra gorge. But she did not pretend to be able to live on Nature's great wonders alone. She was delightfully candid about it.
"No, my dear ones," she said to Ejnar and Gerda, "I am the wicked product of a beautifully wicked world. I need my fellow-sinners. It would never have contented me to lie flat on my stomach looking for flowers and grasses, and so forth. Nor would it have been desirable for me. I should never have got up!"
Nevertheless, when her botanists came back from their wanderings, with their green tin wallets full of mystic treasures unguessed at by the uninitiated, she was eagerness itself to know whether they had had "good hunting." And when Gerda said:
"Wicked old Tante, you know you are interested in these things," she answered gaily: