“But the opportunity was too tempting.”
“Never mind, I will excuse you from further efforts. Turn around and notice that wonderful purple halo which is hovering over the forests below. Isn’t it glorious?”
“No, don’t let us be solemn, pray. The sun I have seen a thousand times before, but you I have seen very seldom of late. Somehow, since I returned this time, you seem to keep me at a distance. You no longer confide to me your great plans for the abolishment of war, and the improvement of mankind generally. Why don’t you tell me whether you have as yet succeeded in convincing the peasants that cleanliness is a cardinal virtue, that hawthorn hedges are more picturesque than rail fences, and that salt meat is a very indigestible article?”
“You know the fate of my reforms, from long experience,” she answered, with the same sad, sweet smile. “I am afraid there must be some thing radically wrong about my methods; and, moreover, I know that your aspirations and mine are no longer the same, if they ever have been, and I am not ungenerous enough to force you to feign an interest which you do not feel.”
“Yes, I know you think me flippant and boyish,” retorted he, with sudden energy, and tossing a stone down into the gulf below. “But, by the way, my friend Strand, if he ever comes, would be just the man for you. He has quite as many hobbies as you have, and, what is more, he has a profound respect for hobbies in general, and is universally charitable toward those of others.”
“Your friend is a great man,” said the girl, earnestly. “I have read his book on `The Wading Birds of the Norwegian Highlands,’ and none but a great man could have written it.”
“He is an odd stick, but, for all that, a capital fellow; and I have no doubt you would get on admirably with him.”
At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of the pastor’s man, Hans, who came to tell the “young miss” that there was a big tramp hovering about the barns in the “out-fields,” where he had been sleeping during the last three nights. He was a dangerous character, Hans thought, at least judging from his looks, and it was hardly safe for the young miss to be roaming about the fields at night as long as he was in the neighborhood.
“Why don’t you speak to the pastor, and have him arrested?” said Arnfinn, impatient of Hans’s long-winded recital.
“No, no, say nothing to father,” demanded Augusta, eagerly. “Why should you arrest a poor man as long as he does nothing worse than sleep in the barns in the out-fields?”