"Marget Erikson? Her I know very well, but it is not so easy to tell where she lives," answered the curate, with at the same time an inquiring glance at the stranger. A look of intelligence came into his face, and he said: "It is not—it cannot be! no," and he turned to the group of small boys, now all standing, some of them weeds in hand, wonderingly regarding the stranger. "Here, Kael," said the father, singling out a fair-haired, intelligent-looking little fellow, "you can show the young lady the way to widow Marget Erikson's." Again there was a scrutinizing, questioning look on the part of the pastor.
A slight flush tinged the cheek of the stranger. She was turning away with her guide, when the boy said hastily, "Where's the basket, mamma?"
"There'll be no basket to-day," she answered, almost with a smile. "You can take Marget this instead from me," and she picked from her favourite bush a large, half-open rosebud, with a long stem and rich, shining leaves.
The boy could hardly understand the love-prompted courtesy that would not send to the widow what might to a stranger seem like alms, but which really was but the sharing of what one poor Christian had with a poorer.
The guide trotted off with his bare feet across the meadow, where a little path showed that he was not the first to find a direct way from the parsonage to the widow's cottage.
"Well, wife? well, Anna?" said the pastor, and looked inquiringly into the face of his best-beloved, as he generally did when he was in doubt or difficulty. It was a face that any one might have been pleased to look upon. It had in it the bright cheeriness of a child, and at the same time dignity and a wisdom in this world's matters, as well as "the wisdom that cometh from above." He received no answer, and so said himself: "She was in church yesterday when you were at little Fia's death-bed. I could hardly help thinking of you and the child when I was in the midst of my sermon. The miller told me afterwards that 'miss' and the little girl were with Possessionaten something, a traveller who had stopped at the inn by the cross-road."
There was a sudden end put to the conversation by a loud cry from the baby, which swept all other expressions from the face of the pastor's wife, where at once mother love was triumphant.