Olaf bounded into the house, where he was carried off to a sleeping-room and there carefully sponged by the sympathetic Gudrid. “Oh!—” he exclaimed, while his face was being washed.
“Does it pain you much, dear?” said the pretty aunt, interrupting him.
“Oh!” he continued, enthusiastically, “I never did see such a splendid man before.”
“What splendid man, child?”
“Why, Karlsefin.”
“And who is Karlsefin?”
“The stranger who has come across the sea from Norway.”
“Indeed,” said Gudrid.
Whether it was the sound of the stranger’s voice in the adjoining room, or anxiety to complete her hospitable preparations, that caused Gudrid to bring her operations on Olaf to an abrupt termination, we cannot tell, but certain it is that she dried him rather quickly and hastened into the outer hall, where she was introduced to the two strangers in due form as widow Gudrid.
She had no difficulty in distinguishing which was Olaf’s “splendid man!” She looked at Karlsefin and fell in love with him on the spot, but Gudrid was modest, and not sentimental. It is only your mawkishly sentimental people who are perpetually tumbling into love, and out of it, and can’t help showing it. Cupid shot her right through the heart with one powerful dart, and took her unawares too, but she did not show the smallest symptom of having been even grazed. She neither blushed nor stammered, nor looked conscious, nor affected to look unconscious. She was charmingly natural!