"Maybe the person she met was an old lady who had difficulty in walking," the seine-maker went on in the same offhand manner, "and maybe she stumbled and fell when Glory Goldie came along."
"Would that be anything to write about?" asked Katrina, weary of this senseless talk.
"But suppose Glory Goldie stopped and helped the old lady up?" pursued the seine-maker, "and she was so thankful to the girl for helping her that she opened her purse and gave her all of ten rix-dollars—wouldn't that be worth telling?"
"Why certainly," said Katrina, "if it were true. But this is just something you're making up."
"It is well, sometimes, to be able to indulge in little thought feasts," contended the seine-maker, "they are often more satisfying than the real ones."
"You've tried both kinds," returned Katrina, "so you ought to know."
The seine-maker went his way directly, and Katrina gave no further thought to his story.
As for Jan, he took it at first as idle chatter. But lying abed, with nothing to take up his mind, presently he began to wonder if there was not some hidden meaning back of the seine-maker's words. The old man's tone sounded a bit peculiar when he spoke of the letter. Would he have sat there and made up such a long story only for talk's sake? Perhaps he had heard something. Perhaps Glory Goldie had written to him? It was quite possible that something so great had come to the little girl that she dared not send direct word to her parents, and wrote instead to the seine-maker, asking him to prepare them.
"He'll come again to-morrow," thought Jan, "and then we'll hear all about it."
But for some reason the seine-maker did not come back the next day, nor the day after. By the third day Jan had become so impatient to see his old friend that he got up and went over to his cabin, to find out whether there was anything in what he had said.