Regarding her, her foster-son began deliberately to parry. “What did he say? Snowfrid, you are a simpleton! Do you suppose that folks gabble like wild turkeys while a noblewoman and her frippery are standing around? As for his looks, I can tell you that a red-headed woodpecker would get bashful beside him, all in green cloth from top to toe, with his hair cut like the Jarl’s. I did not wonder at all that the maiden wanted him for a page only from seeing him pick up her necklace in the road.”
The thin lips of Eric’s mother relaxed unconsciously into a smile, as her hands took up the last bandage; but Eric’s sister gave her flaxen braids a toss.
“I think he would not have been hindered from asking about us if he had wished,” she said. “It is my belief that the young one is puffed up with pride. Three times has the trading-ship on which he went up to see the wonders of the Town been back without bringing him for so much as a visit. It is my belief that he was ashamed to speak to Rand—” She was startled into swallowing the rest of the word by the sharpness with which Erna turned upon her.
“I know that he was not,” his mother said, sternly. “That his wits get dizzy from living with high people may well be. I was foolish myself about court ways when I came to be bowermaid to King Hildebrand’s daughter; but that he should ever fall off so much as to be ungrateful is not likely. I know that he remembered what is due to Freya’s son, and greeted him with respect.”
Randvar’s face was hidden by the shirt he was drawing on, but from its linen depths he chuckled.
“Never fear but what he greeted me! And named me to his mistress besides, else might she have thought me some shaggy beast.”
“There!” said Erna; and Snowfrid, somewhat abashed, turned her attention to dishing up the evening meal of venison broth and bread.
After the meal was under way, however, it occurred to her to ask concerning the appearance of Brynhild the Proud.
The power which the mere mention of that name had to upset his peace of mind amazed Randvar, even while he curtly denied any recollection of her whatever. It was a relief when at last eating was over, and Snowfrid had gone off to carry a jug of broth to the cabinful of old men, who were all that was left of Rolf’s lusty crew. Erna took up her knitting, then, and retired into her wonted silence and to her wonted seat on the other side of the fire; and he was free to stretch himself upon the floor of cedar boughs, and yield unreservedly to the strange turmoil of his thoughts.
Gazing out where the moon was steering between white cloud-reefs towards the open blue, he spoke dreamily: “Foster-mother, you knew the turns of Freya’s mind as a forester knows his home-trail—tell me how she took this life here.”