Now all that winter until Yule-time Eric spread a good feast every night. There was laughter through his house all the time. Often at the feasts the men cast lots to see whether they might sit on the cross-bench with the women. Sometimes it was Thorfinn's luck to sit by Gudrid. Then they talked gaily and drank together.
At last Yule was coming near. Eric went about the house gloomy then. One day Thorfinn put his hand on Eric's shoulder and said:
"Something is troubling you, Eric. We have all noticed that you are not gay as you used to be. Tell me what is the matter."
"You have carried yourselves like noble men in my house," Eric answered. "I am proud to have you for guests. Now I am ashamed that you should not find a house worthy of you. I am ashamed that when you leave me you will have to say that you never spent a worse Yule than you did with Eric the Red in Greenland. For my cupboards are empty."
"Oh, that is easily mended," Thorfinn said. "No house could feed eighty men so long and not feel it. I never knew so generous a host before. But I have flour and grain and mead in my boat. You are welcome to all of it. You have only to open the doors of your own storehouses. It is a little gift."
So Eric used those things, and there was never a merrier Yule feast than in his house that winter.
When Yule was over, Thorfinn said to Eric:
"Gudrid is a beautiful and wise woman. I wish to have her for my wife."
"You seem to be a man worthy of her," Eric said.
So that winter Gudrid and Thorfinn were married and lived at Eric's house.