That also had a good effect. Old Hermansson could not bear Peter since he had exposed Brundin. Laura already knew so much about the human heart. The old man nodded pensively:
“I admit that your brother Peter is not all that he ought to be. But if it is not always pleasant at home, you know that you are always welcome at Ekbacken.”
“Thank you. You are so awfully kind, both you and Herman. But ...” (Laura flushed beneath her self-induced pallor and glanced archly at her guardian) “but ... it looks strange for me to be always here. I don’t know if it is right any longer and then I thought that both you and Herman would like me to have some sort of education.”
Here she was interrupted by an attack of coughing, and she put her hand to her chest with an anxious and sudden air of distraction.
Her guardian looked very perplexed. As a matter of fact he looked upon the affection of the young pair for each other with some pleasure. He himself had originally been a poor clerk who had risen to his present position by marrying the daughter of his employer. To him Selambshof and the Selambs still seemed an old distinguished place and family. Yes! secretly he was even flattered by Laura’s walks with Herman. The thought of his future daughter-in-law being in a Swiss boarding school like the young lady at Trefvinge was also pleasant. So he slowly assumed an expression which was more of anxiety than of opposition.
“Well, my dear child, we must think it over.”
Laura had to control herself not to dance for joy so long as she was within sight of Ekbacken. But when she reached home she ate for the first time for a whole month till she was satisfied.
The following weeks were for Laura a time of glowing expectation, blissful faithlessness, touching farewells and a feeling almost approaching love.
On one of the first days of September, when the air had all the coolness and clearness of autumn, she and Herman were walking through the garden of Selambshof. The garden was situated on the southern slope, between the avenue and the lake, screened by a row of tall ash trees from the dismal, brooding, heaviness of the house. It was much neglected but it was a pleasant sort of neglect and this was after all a little corner of Selambshof where something of an idyll still lingered.
Laura and Herman were strolling slowly along the wet, half choked paths between currant bushes smothered in weeds and scraggy old apple trees covered with grey moss which still as if by a miracle bore beautiful shining apples. Here a tumbled-down fence lay with an appearance of infinite fatigue, and there the pestweed had pushed up into the light out of a half smothered ditch, and with its dense growth of enormous leaves had vanquished a row of raspberry bushes, where dry branches stretched up helplessly out of the green sea. Then there was a row of frames with broken glass and a bed of cabbages looking quite blue in the shade. Then came the long beds with a few asters and dahlias in front of the gardener’s dilapidated old cottage.