Then the measured and sonorous breathing which had been coming through an open door from the adjoining room was interrupted by an older voice, a good-natured voice trying to be angry, and saying drowsily:
"Drat the girl, she'll waken the whole house."
This was followed by the creaking of a bed and the thud of bare feet on the floor, accompanied by a running fire of grumbling, in which the speaker reminded herself that she was not a cat, capable of sleeping in the daytime, and if she had to be called up in the dead of night she might at least be permitted to wash her face.
The girl listened for a moment and laughed--the light and joyous laugh of the soul that has never known sorrow. She was young and unusually fair. Her height was under rather than over the average height of woman, and if her face was not beautiful it produced the effect of beauty, being one of those soft-featured faces which have a smile always playing upon them, even when the owner does not know it to be there.
She lit her candles, dropped her Venetians, and began to dress herself, humming a tune to show she was not concerned. By this time the rumbling artillery from the next apartment entered the room in the person of an elderly lady, who looked more than usually grotesque (if it is fair to take her at such a moment) in abbreviated underwear and small calico nightcap, with bobs of hair in papers about her forehead like barnacles on the figurehead of a ship that is fresh from a long service in foreign waters.
This was Aunt Margret, with goodness written on every line of her old face, but with a tongue that fell like a fountain on sharp stones and knew nothing of dry weather. The moment she set eyes on Thora in the preliminary stages of her toilet she cried:
"Silk? At this time in the morning? And who is to see them under your big boots, if you please?"
The girl laughed at this, as she laughed at everything, and said: "Very well, give me the woollen ones then. But what a cross old thing you are, auntie. You knew I had to get up early, having a six hours' ride before me."
"But who wants you to have a six hours' ride, I wonder?" said Aunt Margret, bustling about breathlessly to get the girl ready.
"You know quite well who wants me, auntie--Magnus wants me. When they elected him mountain-king for the year I promised him faithfully that I would go to the sheep-gathering, and of course----"