“I should like to come to King’s Cross too,” said Sigrid. “But perhaps it is better that I should stay here and get things quite ready. I hope Swanhild will turn up all right. She seems such a little thing to travel all that way alone.”
When he had set off, she began with great satisfaction to lay the table for tea; the white cloth was certainly coarse; but she had bought it and hemmed it, and declared that fine damask would not have suited the willow-pattern plates nearly so well. Then, after a struggle, the tin of pressed beef was opened, and the loaf and butter and the vases of chrysanthemums put in their places, and the toast made and standing before the fire to keep hot. After that she kept putting a touch here and a touch there to one thing and another, and then standing back to see how it looked, much as an artist does when finishing a picture. How would it strike Swanhild? was the thought which was always with her. She put everything tidy in the bare little kitchen, where, in truth, there was not one unnecessary piece of furniture. She took some of Frithiof’s things out of his portmanteau, and made his narrow little bedroom look more habitable; and she lingered long in the room with the two beds side by side, tidying and arranging busily, but running back into the sitting-room every few minutes to see that all was well there.
At last she heard the door-handle turned, and Frithiof’s voice.
“You’ll find her quite a domesticated character,” he was saying; and in another minute Swanhild was in her arms, none the worse for her lonely journey, but very glad to feel her cares at an end.
“Oh, Sigrid!” she cried, with childlike glee; “what a dear, funny little room! And how cosy you have made it! Why, there’s the picture of Bergen! and oh, what a pretty-looking tea-table! I’m dreadfully hungry, Sigrid. I was afraid to get out of the train for fear it should go on. They seem to go so dreadfully fast here, everything is in a bustle.”
“You poor child, you must be starving!” cried Sigrid. “Come and take your things off quickly. She really looks quite thin and pale, does she not, Frithiof?”
He glanced at the fair, merry little face, smiling at him from under its fringe of golden hair.
“She doesn’t feel so very bony,” he said, laughing.
“Oh, and I did eat something,” explained Swanhild. “There was an old lady who gave me two sandwiches, but they were so dreadfully full of fat. I do really think there ought to be a law against putting fat in sandwiches so that you bite a whole mouthful of it.”
They all laugh, and Frithiof, who was unstrapping the box which he had carried up, looked so cheerful and bright, that Sigrid began to think Swanhild might prove a very valuable little companion.