“What do you think—am I as you like me to be?” she asks. “Perhaps I talk too much. No? Oh, but you must say what you really think. Sometimes I think to myself this can never come to any good...”
“What can never come to any good?” I ask.
“This between us. That it cannot come to any good. You may believe it or not, but I am shivering now with cold; I feel icy cold the moment I come to you. Just out of happiness.”
“It is the same with me,” I answer. “I feel a shiver, too, when I see you. But it will come to some good all the same. And, anyhow, let me pat you on the back, to warm you.”
And she lets me, half unwillingly, and then I hit a little harder, for a jest, and laugh, and ask if that doesn't make her feel better.
“Oh, please, don't when I ask you; please,” says she.
Those few words! There was something so helpless about her saying it so, the wrong way round: “Please don't when I ask you.”...
Then we went on along the road again. Was she displeased with me for my jest, I wondered? And thought to myself: Well, let us see. And I said:
“I just happened to think of something. Once when I was out on a sledge party, there was a young lady who took a silk kerchief from her neck and fastened it round mine. In the evening, I said to her: 'You shall have your kerchief again to-morrow; I will have it washed.' 'No,' she said, 'give it to me now; I will keep it just as it is, after you have worn it.' And I gave it to her. Three years after, I met the same young lady again. 'The kerchief,' I said. And she brought it out. It lay in a paper, just as before; I saw it myself.”
Edwarda glanced up at me.