They murmured, both the man and the woman, that they had not been given their breakfast yet: “None will be at the pains to bear in food to us twice in the day, so we must e’en starve while you run about the town, Brother Edwin!”
“Nay, be not peevish, Steinulv,” said the monk, “—Come hither and make your greetings, Kristin—see this bonny, sweet little maid who is to stay and eat with us to-day.”
He told how Steinulv had fallen sick on the way home from a fair, and had got leave to lie here in the cloister guest-house, for he had a kinswoman dwelling in the spital and she was so curst he could not endure to be there with her.
“But I see well enough, they will soon be weary of having me here,” said the peasant. “When you set forth again, Brother Edwin, there will be none here that has time to tend me, and they will surely have me to the spital again.”
“Oh! you will be well and strong long before I am done with my work in the church,” said Brother Edwin. “Then your son will come and fetch you—” He took up a kettle of hot water from the hearth and let Kristin hold it while he tended Steinulv. Thereupon the old man grew somewhat easier, and soon after there came in a monk with food and drink for them.
Brother Edwin said grace over the meat, and set himself on the edge of the bed by Steinulv that he might help him to take his food. Kristin went and sat by the woman and gave the boy to eat, for he was so little he could not well reach up to the porridge-dish, and he spilled upon himself when he tried to dip into the beer-bowl. The woman was from Hadeland, and she was come hither with her man and her children to see her brother who was a monk here in the cloister. But he was away wandering among the country parishes, and she grumbled much that they must lie here and waste their time.
Brother Edwin spoke the woman fair: she must not say she wasted time when she was here in Bishopshamar. Here were all the brave churches, and the monks and canons held masses and sang the livelong day and night—and the city was fine, finer than Oslo even, though ’twas somewhat less; but here were gardens to almost every dwelling-place: “You should have seen it when I came hither in the spring—’twas white with blossom over all the town. And after, when the sweet-brier burst forth—”
“Aye, and much good is that to me now,” said the woman sourly. “And here are more of holy places than of holiness, methinks—”
The monk laughed a little and shook his head. Then he routed amidst the straw of his bed and brought forth a great handful of apples and pears which he shared amongst the children. Kristin had never tasted such good fruit. The juice ran out from the corners of her mouth every bite she took.
But now Brother Edwin must go to the church, he said, and Kristin should go with him. Their path went slantwise across the close, and, by a little side wicket, they passed into the choir.