“Kristin,” said Arne in a low voice.
At that moment a loud scream came from Ulvhild. Her crutch had caught between the stones, and she had fallen. Arne and Kristin ran to her, and Arne lifted her up into her sister’s arms. She had cut her mouth and much blood was flowing from the hurt.
Kristin sat down with her in the smithy door, and Arne fetched water in a wooden bowl. Together they set to washing and wiping her face. She had rubbed the skin off her knees, too. Kristin bent tenderly over the small, thin legs.
Ulvhild’s wailing soon grew less, but she wept silently and bitterly as children do who are used to suffering pain. Kristin held her head to her bosom and rocked her gently.
Then the bell began to ring for Vespers up at Olav’s-Church.
Arne spoke to Kristin, but she sat bent over her sister as though she neither heard nor marked him, so that at last he grew afraid and asked if she thought there was danger in the hurt. Kristin shook her head, but looked not at him.
Soon after she got up and went towards the farmstead, bearing Ulvhild in her arms. Arne followed, silent and troubled—Kristin seemed so deep in thought, and her face was set and hard. As she walked, the bell went on ringing out over the meadows and the dale; it was still ringing as she went into the house.
She laid Ulvhild in the bed which the sisters had shared ever since Kristin had grown too big to sleep by her father and mother. She slipped her shoes off and lay down beside the little one,—lay and listened for the ringing of the bell long after it was hushed and the child slept.
It had come to her as the bell began to ring, while she sat with Ulvhild’s little bleeding face in her hands, that maybe it was a sign to her. If she should go to convent in her sister’s stead—if she should vow herself to the service of God and the Virgin Mary—might not God give the child health and strength again?
She thought of Brother Edwin’s word: that nowadays ’twas only marred and crippled children and those for whom good husbands could not be found that their fathers and mothers gave to God. She knew her father and mother were godly folks—yet had she never heard aught else but that she should wed—but when they understood that Ulvhild would be sickly all her days they planned for her straightway that she should go to the cloister—