“Then I wish you would not, Ulla: you know that.”
“I do know it, my dear, and I would not be for hastening God’s appointments. Let all be in His own time. And I know, by myself, how happy you may be,—you and Rolf,—while Peder and I are failing and dying. I only say that none wish for your crowning more than we. O, Erica! you have a fine lot in having Rolf.”
“Indeed, I know it, Ulla.”
“Do but look about you, dear, and see how he keeps the house. And if you were to see him give me my cup of coffee, and watch over Peder, you would consider what he is likely to be to a pretty young thing like you, when he is what he is to two worn-out old creatures like us.”
Erica did not need convincing about these things, but she liked to hear them.
“Where is he now?” asked Ulla. “I always ask where everybody is, at this season; people go about staring at the snow, as if they had no eyes to lose. That is the way my husband did. Do make Rolf take care of his precious eyes, Erica. Is he abroad to-day, my dear?”
“By this time he is,” replied Erica, “I left him at work at the pulpit—”
“Ay! trying his eyes with fine carving, as Peder did!”
“But,” continued Erica, “there was news this morning of a lodgment of logs at the top of the foss (Note 2); and they were all going, except Peder, to slide them down the gully to the fiord. The gully is frozen so slippery, that the work will not take long. They will make a raft of the logs in the fiord, and either Rolf or Hund will carry them out to the islands when the tide ebbs.”
“Will it be Rolf, do you think, or Hund, dear?”