FREY STARTS ON HIS ROUNDS
CHAPTER XIV FREY STARTS ON HIS ROUNDS
The weather was mild and open when Frey set out in his wagon, and the roads were heavy. They plunged into the forest ways, where the tracks were swimming in melting snow, and the air was rife with dripping trees. But the birds were all awake, the buds were shining, there was spring in the air. Gunnar walked beside the oxen and touched their necks now and then with the nodding point of his switch; Frey kept his bed, and Sigrid trudged beside Gunnar, heedless of the wet and mire. Sometimes she took his hand, sometimes his arm; sometimes his arm supported her. She was very happy, talked and laughed as she had never before.
Now she could laugh at Frey, it seems. "Frey is snoozing," she said. "He doesn't see what we see."
"No," said Gunnar; "but let him alone. He will have to work by and by. It is no light matter to order the yearly affairs of the earth."
"No, indeed," she said. "Besides, you have cut him off his blood-offerings which he loves."