Then Mathilde, the parson's daughter, came running up calling, "Eli! Eli!"
The two girls wept in each other's arms.
"You must take this," said Mathilde, giving her friend a bird-cage. "Mother wants you to. Yes, you must take Narrifas, and then you'll often think of me."
"Eli! Come, come, Eli!" came the summons from the boat.
A moment after, and Arne saw the boat out in the water, Eli standing up in the stern, holding the bird-cage and waving her hand to Mathilde. His eyes followed the boat, and he watched it draw near to the land. He could see the three forms mirrored in the water, and continued gazing until they had left the boat and gone indoors at the biggest house on the opposite side of the lake.
Mathilde had sat for some time by the landing stage, but she had left now, and Arne was alone when Eli came out again for a last look across the water. Arne could see her image in the lake. "Perhaps she sees me now," he thought. Then, when the sun had set, he got up and went home, feeling that all things were at peace.
Arne's fancies for some time now were of dreams of love and fair maidens. Old ballads and romances mirrored them for him, as the water had mirrored the young girl.
A two-fold longing--the yearning to have someone to love, and a desire to do something great--sprang up together in his soul, and melted into one. Again he began to work at the song, "Over the mountains high," altering it, and thinking each time, "One day it will carry me off." But he never forgot his mother in his thoughts of travel, and decided that he would send for her as soon as he had got a footing abroad.
There was in the parish a merry old fellow of the name of Ejnar Aasen. He was well off, and, in spite of a lameness that made him use a crutch, was fond of organising parties of children to go nutting. All the young people called him "godfather."
Aasen liked Arne, and invited him to join in the next nutting party, and though Arne blushed, and made excuses, he decided to go. He found himself the only young man among many girls. They were not the maidens of whom he had made songs, nor yet was he afraid of them. They were more full of life than anything he had seen, and they could make merry over anything. All of them laughed at Arne, as they caught at the branches, because he was serious, so that he could not help laughing himself.