'Truly I cannot say, Mr. Rollo. But I do not often "thwart" myself—as you may have observed. Does the absence of Norse blood make the fact doubtful?'
'Norse habit, say rather,' said Rollo, shaking his head; 'Norse habit, induced by Norse necessity. In many a Norwegian homestead you would get little besides porridge, often. But Gyda likes it, and so do I. At any rate, it is invariable for a Norse meal, in this house. It is one of the things which can be transplanted. Gyda would have enjoyed a row of reindeer's horns bristling along the eaves of her cottage; but I told her the boys of the Hollow would not leave them long if I set them there.'
'But you are half Danish,' said Wych Hazel. 'And was it for love of Denmark that you got your name?'
'Which name? If you please?'
'You know,' said Wych Hazel, with a shy blush, as if it were a sort of freedom for her to know and speak it, 'they call you, "Dane Rollo." '
'That's not my name, though,' said he, smiling. 'I am no further a Dane than being born in Copenhagen makes me so. I am half Norse, and a quarter German; Denmark has given me a nickname,—that's all.'
'Then, if we were in Norway and this a considerable farmhouse, we should have passed through an ante-room filled with all sorts of things. Meal chests, and tools, and thongs of leather, skins of animals and wild birds, snow shoes and casks and little sledges. Do you know,' he went on, 'if this were not the land of my father, I could find it in my heart to go and live in the land of my mother. It is a noble land, and it is a fine people. Feudal law never obtained footing there; every landholder held under no superior; and so there is a manly, genial independence in all the country-side, not found everywhere else.'
He went on for some little time to give Wych Hazel pictures of the scenery, unlike all she had ever known. He knew and loved it well, and his sketches were given graphically. In the midst of this Gyda came in again; and Rollo broke off, and asked her, laughingly, if she had any 'fladbrod.'
'Fresh,' she said. 'Olaf, can't you get her some peaches?'
Rollo went off; and the old woman began to set her table with bowls and plates and spoons; an oddly carved little tub of butter, and a pile of thin brown cakes. Having done this, and Rollo not returning, on the contrary seeming to have found more than peach trees to detain him, for the sound of hammer was heard at intervals, the old woman came and stood by Wych Hazel again. The straw hat was off; and she eyed in a tender kind of way, wistful too, the fair young face.