But Alrek, sitting back on his heels, shaking back his long hair, remained intent upon the cradle. "It is the greatest fun," he said, "to see the cub try to frown at me. His eyebrows are like the fuzz on a chicken, yet he tries to make them look like his namesake's, before a laugh gets the better of him. Watch now!"
Small Snorri had been there but seven months; he was still wonderfully new. The maid and Erlend left their chase, and Gudrid came from her loom, and together they watched breathlessly the knitting of the downy brows above the blue eyes, and the slow dawning of the unwilling smile, brighter and brighter, until in each soft cheek a dimple broke.
"He is going to be in every respect like his father!" Gudrid cried, falling on her knees beside him. And she was smothering him with kisses, and the others were looking on sympathetically, when the door was flung open before little Olaf the Fair, rosy and breathless.
"Where is Alrek?" he panted. "I want—Oh! Alrek! What do you think I have seen?"
"Hallad?" shrieked the three bondmaids together.
"Skraellings! Black as crowberries. Crossing the open space west of here. With big packs on their backs. I was up in that tree by the wheat-shed, watching for Brand to slip on the slide I had made to get revenge on him for cuffing me, and—" His voice was lost in the babel of exclamations that came from the bondmaids and from the men peering around the hall door.
Gudrid rose from beside the cradle with a gesture of authority. "Too much noise is here. Since Karlsefne is away it behooves us to be especially careful how we behave. Run, some one of you, to the Icelanders' booth. I know that Snorri is not there, but if it happen that Biorn is, ask him to get a following together and stand ready to receive the wild men. And since it is likely that they will want to buy the same dairy wares as before, Melkorka, you may have charge—but there! Tch! Your heedlessness is such that you would give them three times as much as they required. I shall have to portion, it out myself. The child I will leave with you, Roswitha—No, you would forget him if a man so much as looked through the door at you! Kinsman!" She laid a white hand on Alrek's brown one as he would have moved past her. "He is more fond of you than of any one, and I would trust you before a hundred girls,—so long as you keep his fingers away from that hatchet in your belt. Will you not stay with him the little while that I must be in the dairy?"
Stay with a baby while the long-looked-forward-to trading went on without him! Frowning involuntarily, the Sword-Bearer hesitated,—and during that pause the Fate who was spinning his life-thread sat with suspended breath, so much hung on his answer.
It can not be denied that it came somewhat grudgingly when it did come. "Why—if it will be a little while, kinswoman," he stipulated, turning back.