“Which you see I could never have done,” said Sigrid merrily. “Poor Torvald! I am very glad he is happily settled. Frithiof must go and see him. How do you think Swanhild is looking, Auntie?”
“Very well and very pretty,” said Fru Grönvold. “One would naturally suppose that, at her rather awkward age, she would have lost her good looks, but she is as graceful as ever.”
“She is a very brave, hard-working little woman,” said Sigrid. “I told you that she had begged so hard to stay on with Madame Lechertier that we had consented. It would indeed have been hardly fair to take her away all at once, when Madame had been so kind and helpful to us; and Swanhild is very independent, you know, and declares that she must have some sort of profession, and that to be a teacher of dancing is clearly her vocation.”
“By and by, when she is grown up, she is going to keep my house,” said Frithiof.
“No, no,” said Sigrid; “I shall never spare her, unless it is to get married; you two would never get on by yourselves. By the by, I am sure Cecil is keeping away from us on purpose; she went off on the plea of reading for her half-hour society, but she has been gone quite a long time. Go and find her, Frithiof, and tell her we very much want her.”
He went out and found Cecil comfortably installed in the dining-room with her book.
“Have you not read enough?” he said. “We are very dull without you in there.”
“I thought you would have so much to talk over together,” she said, putting down her book and lifting her soft gray eyes to his.
“Not a bit,” he replied; “we are pining for music and want you to sing, if you are not too tired. What learned book were you reading, after such a journey? Plato?”
“A translation of the ‘Phaedo,’” she said. “There is such a strange little bit here about pleasure being mixed with pain always.”