“Bless you all, I am desperately sleepy,” said Francesca, yawning carelessly. “Ugh! it is freezing! I cannot understand how you can sit on that cold stone, Jenny. I want to go to bed at once—subito!”
“I am sleepy too.” Heggen yawned. “We must go home, but I am going to have a cup of hot milk at my dairy first. Are you coming?”
They went down the Spanish stairs. Helge looked at all the little green leaves that peeped out between the stone steps.
“Fancy anything growing where so many people walk up and down.”
“Everywhere, where there is some earth between the stones, something grows. You should have seen the roof below our house last spring. There is even a little fig-tree growing between the tiles, and Cesca is very concerned about it lest it should not stand the winter, and wonders where it will get nourishment when it grows bigger. She has made a sketch of it.”
“Your friend is a painter, too, I understand?”
“Yes—she is very talented.”
“I remember seeing a picture of yours at the autumn exhibition at home,” said Helge. “Roses in a copper bowl.”
“I painted it here last spring, but I am not altogether pleased with it now. I was in Paris for two months in the summer, and I think I learnt a lot in that time. But I sold it for three hundred kroner—the price I had marked it for. There are some things in it that are good.”