"Certainly."
"And I have no doubt that we could hear the echoes ringing over the hills," continued Hansine, soberly.
"Never mind, you needn't make fun. Yes, Hr. Bogstad, I think we have some grand natural scenes. I often climb up on the hills, and sit and look over the pines and the shining lake down towards home. Then, sometimes, I can see the ocean like a silver ribbon, lying on the horizon. I sit up there and gaze and think, as Hansine says, nearly all night. I seem to be under a spell. You know it doesn't get dark all night now, and the air is so delicious. My thoughts go out 'Over the high mountains,' as Bjornson says, and I want to be away to hear and see what the world is and has to tell me. A kind of sweet loneliness comes over me which I cannot explain."
Hr. Bogstad had finished his dish. He, too, was under a spell—the spell of a soft, musical voice.
"Then the light in the summer," she continued. "How I have wished to go north where the sun shines the whole twenty-four hours. Have you ever seen the Midnight Sun, Hr. Bogstad?"
"No; but I have been thinking of taking a trip up there this summer, if I can get some good company to go with me. Wouldn't you—"
It was then that Signe hurriedly pushed her chair away and said: "Thanks for the food."
Next morning Signe was very busy. She washed the wooden milk basins, scalded them with juniper tea, and then scoured them with sand. She churned the butter and wanted to help with the cheese, but Hansine thought that she was not paying enough attention to their visitor, so she ordered her off to her lookout on the mountain. Hr. Bogstad would help her up the steep places; besides, he could tell her the names of the ferns and flowers, and answer the thousand and one questions which she was always asking. So, of course, they had to go.
But Signe was very quiet, and Henrik said but little. He had come to the conclusion that he truly loved this girl whose parents were among the poorest of his tenants. None other of his acquaintances, even among the higher class, charmed him as did Signe. He was old enough to marry, and she was not too young. He knew full well that if he did marry her, many of his friends would criticise; but Henrik had some of the Norseman spirit of liberty, and he did not think that a girl's humble position barred her from him. True, he had received very little encouragement from her, though her parents had looked with favor upon him. And now he was thinking of her cold indifference.
They sat down on a rocky bank, carpeted with gray reindeer moss.