He had stood up and stepped up to Freneli, and tears stood in his honest eyes; while they were rolling down her aunt’s cheeks.  Then Freneli looked up at him and her eyes grew moist, though mockery and defiance still quivered about her mouth; but the repressed love broke through and began to send its shining rays out of her eyes, while her maidenly reluctance cast up her lips as bulwark against her surrender to his manly insistence.  And while her eyes radiated love, still there came forth from behind the pouting lips the mocking words:  “But, Uli, what will Stini say, if you’re after another girl so soon?  Won’t she sing to you: 

    ’A dove-cot would be just as true: 
    It’s off with the old love, on with the new.’”

“But how can you play the fool with him so?” queried her aunt; “you see he’s in earnest.  If I was in his place I’d turn my back on you and tell you to whistle for me if you wanted me.”

“He’s free to do it, Auntie, and you don’t know but I wish he would,” said Freneli.

“No you don’t,” retorted her aunt; “I can hear that in your voice.  And Uli, if you’re not a stupid, you’ll put your arms around her this minute; she won’t shove you out into the room now, trust me.”

But her aunt was mistaken.  Once more the girl summoned all her strength, and whirled about so sharply that she almost shook off Uli again.  But her strength did not hold out.  She fell on Uli’s breast and broke out in loud, almost convulsive weeping.  The two others almost became frightened, as her sobbing seemed to have no end; they did not understand what was the matter.  Uli comforted her as well as he could, and begged her not to go on so:  if she’d rather not have him, he could go away, he wouldn’t torment her.  Her aunt was vexed at first and told her she was silly; that in her day girls hadn’t put a hound to shame with their howling when they found a sweetheart.  But then she became alarmed and said she wouldn’t force the girl; if she was unwilling to have Uli she could do what she liked for all of her.  Only for goodness sake she shouldn’t go on so; the innkeepers might wonder what was happening.

Finally Freneli recovered enough to tell them just to leave her in peace; that she would try to compose herself.  She had been a poor orphan all her life, and an outcast from childhood.  No father had ever taken her on his lap, no mother ever kissed her; never had she had a breast to lay her head on.  She had often thought it wouldn’t be hard even to die, if only she could sit on somebody’s lap and clasp somebody around the neck; but during all her childhood nobody had loved her, and she had had no home.  She couldn’t say how often she had wept alone.  Her longing had always and always been to have somebody that she could love with all her heart and all her soul; to find somebody on whose breast she could hide her head at all times.  She had never found a chum to satisfy her longing.  And so when folks talked to her about marrying, she