Tables and chairs were pulled aside, the Factor went off to smoke, and Oscar and Thora danced while Helga played, laughing loudly, and calling to them again and again.
"Helga! Helga! Not so fast! You'll kill us," cried Thora.
But Helga only laughed the louder and played the faster, with a fierceness that seemed to consume her like a fire.
Oscar went home that night with an aching heart, but Thora went to bed happy.
"How wrong I was about dear Helga, also!" she thought, and then drawing a deep breath she fell asleep.
VIII
To think yourself happy is to be happy, and Thora thought herself the happiest little woman in the world. The weeks before her wedding were the brightest period of her heart's existence. She counted the days backward from the day she was living in to the day of all days that was to come, and every morning, the moment she awoke, she said to herself, "Only nineteen now," and then eighteen, seventeen, and sixteen, until it became three, two, and one. "Our Thora is like a white mouse in a revolving cage--she can't make the world go round quickly enough," said Aunt Margret.
Hers was not the happiness that makes the heart afraid, and she had not a moment's misgiving about Oscar now. She never once saw him alone for more than two minutes together, but that did not trouble her at all. He came and went every day, always in a hurry, and always breathless, and she gave him the benevolence of a smile, and occasionally the charity of a kiss, when it could be done decently behind the dining-room door. But usually he had to be content to see her seated among her dressmakers and sewing-maids, and that suited him better than she knew.
There was nothing to tarnish the white simplicity of her happiness, and when Oscar could come with maps and tour lists to arrange about their journey she would say:
"Why don't you talk it over with Helga? She knows more about traveling."