Kristin looked up into her betrothed’s small, steady eyes. She half lifted her hands—as if to throw them round his neck—when he went on:
“You must not think, Kristin, that you will not forget this. ’Tis not in my mind that we should settle down at Formo as soon as we are wed, so that you would never leave the Dale. No one has the same hue of hair or mind in both rain and sunshine, said old King Sverre, when they blamed his Birch-legs for being overbearing in good fortune—”
Lavrans and Ragnfrid smiled—it was pleasant enough to hear the young man discourse with the air of a wise old bishop. Simon went on:
“’Twould ill beseem me to seek to teach you, who are to be my father-in-law; but so much, maybe, I may make bold to say, that we, my brothers and sisters and I, were brought up more strictly; we were not let run about so freely with the house-folk as I have seen that Kristin is used to. My mother often said that if one played with the cottar carls’ brats, ’twas like one would get a louse or two in one’s hair in the end—and there’s somewhat in that saying.”
Lavrans and Ragnfrid held their peace, but Kristin turned away, and the wish she had felt but a moment before to clasp Simon round the neck, had quite left her.
Towards noon, Lavrans and Simon took their ski and went out to see to some snares up on the mountain ridges. The weather was fine outside—sunshine, and the cold not so great. Both men were glad to slip away from all the sadness and weeping at home, and so they went far—right up among the bare hilltops.
They lay in the sun under a crag and drank and ate; Lavrans spoke a little of Arne—he had loved the boy well, Simon chimed in, praised the dead lad, and said he thought it not strange that Kristin grieved for her foster brother. Then Lavrans said: maybe they should not press her much, but should give her a little time to get back her peace of mind before they drank the betrothal ale. She had said somewhat of wishing to go into a convent for a time.
Simon sat bolt upright, and gave a long whistle.
“You like not the thought?” asked Lavrans.