There was a rattle of the door below. Fru Egholm listened ... yes, it was Hedvig, coming back from her work. There—wiping her boots on Eriksens’ mat, the very thing she’d been strictly forbidden. And dashing upstairs three steps at a time and whistling like a boy. No mistaking Hedvig.
Fru Egholm signed covertly to Sivert to go out in the kitchen. She could give the children their food there, without being noticed. What you don’t hear you don’t fear, as the saying goes. And that was true of Egholm; it always irritated him when Sivert made a noise over his food. Poor child—a good thing he’d the heart to eat and enjoy it.
Hedvig came tumbling in, with a clatter of wooden shoes.
“Puh, what a mess! I’m drenched to the skin. Look!” She ducked forward, sending a stream of water from the brim of her hat. Her hair, in two heavy yellow plaits, slipped round on either side, the ends touching the floor; then with a toss of her head she threw it back, and stood there laughing, in the full glare of the lamp.
Glittering white teeth and golden eyelashes. The freckles round her nose gave a touch of boyishness to her face.
“My dear child, what can we give you to put on?”
“Oh, I’ll find some dry stockings—there’s a pair of mine in the settee.”
“Sivert borrowed those, dear, last Sunday, you know. But you can ask him—he’s outside in the kitchen.”
Egholm, too, must have his meal. He had a ravenous appetite. The pile of bread and dripping vanished from his plate as a cloud passes from the face of the moon. Possibly because he was reading, as he ate, of the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey.