“Not I! What does duty for it is a poor little chippy dried-up thing, which may be reckoned on never to give me an ache or a pain.” She sprang to her feet. “Come! The farm! I am not going to let you off the farm.”
No bridge could they find, and there was nothing for it but to retrace their steps. Down the hill-side, through the entangling greenery, they plunged, breathless and laughing, and found themselves at last overlooking the fjord, without any means of crossing the fos. Anne, undaunted, spied a boat on the fjord rowed by a boy; her signals brought it to shore. The boy readily agreed to row them to a higher point, but, this carried out, he refused to wait for them.
“Never mind! We are here!” Anne cried, springing out. She followed a rough path, and presently pounced on wild strawberries.
A man was digging. Seeing them gathering strawberries, he made signs that they were welcome to the cherries which hung temptingly from his trees. He bent the boughs down; Anne picked and brought crimson handfuls to Millie lying on the grass. The warm sun shone, a little stone-chat scolded from a rail, it was all calm, restful, and fragrant with hay. They went up the narrow path towards the farm; the way was overhung with cherry-trees, and a vagrant stream of water, which played truant from the fall, dashed down, flinging lovely spray over the waving grasses. The farm dominated the fjord; fold after fold of blue hills stretched away, the white water at their feet, and desolate-looking islands staring up at the sunshine, which scarcely softened their black outlines. Anne’s mood changed, she grew silent, and silently they went their way down the little path, till they reached the man still digging his patch of ground.
Millie, tired, inquired how she proposed getting home.
“He will take us in his boat. I asked him as I picked the cherries.”
Going back, it appeared as if the waters had grown yet more still and glassy. Each patch of snow, each outburst of green, each violet shadow, sent a lovely repetition of itself into the world below. The boat slipped dreamily through them, only the lap of the oars, and the faint and distant murmur of the waterfall, breaking the silence. One after another the little green promontories dropped behind, the white church of Odde and the clustering houses took form, a boat passed them. Anne looked up.
“This is not the time for commonplaces, yet they haunt me,” she said impatiently. “I—I—I—I am the commonplace, and I have stumbled into a thick mist of doubts and questionings. Tell me, are you always direct? and certain that right is right and wrong wrong?”
Millie coloured, hesitated. Such an appeal confused her. Anne went on—
“My rules are not so ready. Something else steps in and hoodwinks me, though I dare say it is true that I offer my eyes for the bandage. What I complain of is that when I do my best to walk straight—according to my lights—I am the more cried out upon. Your Mr Wareham, now, acts Rhadamanthus, yet what does he know? How can he pretend to judge what motives influenced me, and whether they were bad or good? Has he discussed them with you?”