Thora came last with a rather sad little note. It was all very wonderful, no doubt, but she was feeling just a wee bit home-sick. Did not care so very much for operas and picture-galleries, so Oscar had to take Helga by herself.
"I like best to sit in the window of the hotel and look at the crowds in the square. Such multitudes! Always going and coming and hardly anybody ever speaking to anybody else! That's what strikes you at first as most extraordinary. It is so strange to think that the people in the streets do not even know each other by sight, and that every young woman who goes by has her own family somewhere--her own husband and perhaps her own children--and that she is hurrying away to them. I don't know why, but it makes me feel so lonely, and then I almost want to be back in my dear, sweet, homely old Iceland."
Magnus had to read this letter aloud--for Anna was no reader of handwriting--and when he came to Thora's part his voice thickened and broke.
The next letter came from Paris, and Helga wrote the whole of it.
"Such sights! Such luxury! Such gaiety! And such dreams of dresses! And then the opera--Chopin, Verdi, Wagner, Greig! We are at the opera every night--that is to say, Oscar and I are, Thora not caring very much for music. Thora's chief pleasure is to walk in the flower market by the Madeleine and watch the children playing, and look as if she wished she were one of them."
"Just like our Thora," said Anna.
"Neils is here--Neils Finsen you know. Neils has finished his course at the Musical College, and is connected in some way with Covent Garden and has come to Paris on managerial business. He seems to be getting along wonderfully and it makes me feel almost envious. Oh, to get on in life! To escape forever from that grey sky and all those freezing surroundings! What I would give to do it! Nothing should stand between me and success in life if I only saw the chance of it. And who knows--perhaps I may some day! Neils declares that my voice has improved wonderfully and I am practising constantly. But to have any real opportunity in music one ought to be here or in London or Dresden, and it is so expensive. I'm nearly penniless as it is, and I am so shockingly dowdy that if some one does not send me----"
The letter was to the Factor and he had cut away the end of it.
"M'm! M'm!" said Anna. "What the Miss is used to, the Misses keeps up." And then they ate their supper of smoked mutton and black bread in silence and rang the bell for prayers.
The third letter from the wedding party came from Italy, and it was written by Oscar only. The post that brought it had been delayed by a snow-storm, and had sheltered two nights on the Moss Fell Heath. At the Inn-farm the cattle-pens had been completely buried, and Magnus and the men had worked up to their waists from daylight to dark, digging a way out of the snow that the beasts might be fed and watered.