“Oh,” said Uli, “she won’t have anybody; I don’t know who’d be good enough for her.”

Now Johannes said they had better think about getting home before church was out; he didn’t wish to run into the church-goers.  Uli followed him, speaking little, and what he said was concerned only with Freneli, now one thing and then another, and he asked Johannes to promise that he wouldn’t let a word that Uli had told him cross his lips.  “You simpleton,” said Johannes, “who should I tell?”

Meanwhile Uli’s mistress had long since been quivering with impatience, and as soon as Uli and his old master entered the room she said to him, “Go up to the room we slept in and see what Freneli’s doing.  Tell her to pack up; we want to start out.”  Uli found the girl standing before a table, folding up one of her aunt’s aprons.  He stepped softly up behind her, put his arm about her quite gently, and said, “Your aunt’s in a hurry.”  Freneli turned swiftly about, and looked silently up at Uli, as if surprised at this unwonted familiarity, and the latter asked, “Are you still angry at me?”

“I’ve never been angry at you,” she replied.

“Then give me a kiss; you’ve never given me one,” answered Uli, and bent down.

At that instant Freneli twisted away so powerfully that he was driven back half across the room; and still it seemed to him as if he had got his kiss; he thought he felt Freneli’s lips quite distinctly on one spot.  But the latter waggishly gave him a dressing down, intimating that she thought he was too old for such tricks, and probably her aunt hadn’t sent him up to take her time with such foolishness.  He must think what Stini, his old sweetheart, would say to it if she came in; she didn’t went to have a wrestling match with her, like Yrsi.  At the same time she laughed so that Uli felt quite crushed and got out as soon as he could.

They were later in setting out than they had expected, for as they were about to hitch up they had to sit down to a meal for which Johannes’s wife had summoned her whole culinary skill and the entire resources of her house.  Although Uli’s mistress kept saying time after time, “Good heavens, who can eat of every dish?” still there was no end of pressing them, and she was not left in peace until she declared that she simply couldn’t swallow another thing; if she was to eat another bite, she’d burst.

While Uli was hitching up she put new coins into the hands of her cousin’s children, although the latter tried to refuse them, and the parents told her not to go to such expense and admonished the children not to be so bold as to take them.  When they took them just the same and ran and showed the treasure to their mother, she said, “Oh, what a thing to do; it makes us ashamed.”  And then her cousin said it was not worth talking about, and urged them to come very soon and visit them, and get back what this visit had cost them.  They would surely come, was the answer; but they shouldn’t have