Outside the church door stood Jacob and Peter. They lifted their caps to Kjersti and shook hands with her. Afterward they shook hands with Lisbeth, lifting their caps to her, too, which had not been their custom before her confirmation. They also said to her, "May it bring you happiness and blessing!"
After that Kjersti and Lisbeth walked about the grassy space in front of the church. They made slow progress, because there were so many people who wanted to greet the mistress of Hoel and to ask what girl it was that she had presented for confirmation on that day. At last they reached the broad wagon, to which the horse had already been harnessed, and, mounting into it, they set forth on their homeward way, returning in silence, as they had come. Not until they had reached home did Kjersti say, "You would like to be alone awhile this afternoon, too?"
"Yes, thank you," responded Lisbeth.
In the afternoon Lisbeth Longfrock again sat alone in the little room in the hall way. Bearhunter, who had now become blind, lay outside her door. Whenever he was not in the kitchen, where, as a rule, he kept to his own corner, he lay at Lisbeth's door, having chosen this place in preference to his old one on the flat stone in front of the house. To lie on the doorstep where so many went out and in—and nowadays they went so rudely—was too exciting for him; but Lisbeth always stepped considerately.
As Lisbeth sat there in her room she was not reading in any book; in fact, she was doing nothing at all. Spread out on the bed before her lay her long frock, which she had not used that winter. It looked very small and worn.
When she had come into her room, where the afternoon sun fell slantwise upon the coverlet of her bed, picturing there the small window frame, she had had a wonderful feeling of peace and contentment. It seemed to her that there was not the least need of thinking about serious things or of reading, either. She felt that the simplest and most natural thing to do was merely to busy herself happily, without putting her thoughts on anything in particular. She had no earthly possessions of value, but she did have a small chest which she had received in the second year of her stay at Hoel, and in this chest there was a tiny side box and also a space in the lid where she had stored away the little she owned that seemed worth keeping. She had pulled the chest forward and opened it. To take the things out, look at each one, and recall the memories connected with them was very pleasant.
There was a good-for-nothing old pocketknife that had been given to her by Ole the first summer on the mountain. There was a letter from Ole, too, that she had received the last autumn, and that no one knew about. In it he had asked if he might send her and Jacob tickets to America after she had been confirmed. She had not answered the letter yet, but she would do it soon now, and thank him, and say that she was not coming,—for she knew that she could never leave Norway.
And then she took out the goat horn that Peter had given her. She was seized with a strong desire to play on it, but did not dare to, because it would sound so strange in the house. Next to the place where the goat horn had lain was a silk neckerchief that Peter had given her for Christmas. He had sent it by Jacob. She herself had not seen or spoken with Peter since that Sunday last year when he had found her on the mountain, until to-day at the church.
And there was the letter she had received from Jacob in regard to their meeting at Peerout Castle. It was the only letter she had ever had from him,—Jacob was not one to write much; but she had a few small gifts that he had sent her.