I turned cold, and the perspiration stood on my forehead, and I must have been as white as a sheet.  For my father’s sake, I thought I must keep up appearances, but the food stuck in my throat, and I could not swallow another mouthful.  I looked across at Susanna; she was crimson.

There was a short silence, during which every one ruminated over what had passed, until the summer day’s drowsiness became too overpowering, and the minister and the sheriff, who were both accustomed to take an after-dinner nap, proposed that every one should seek a shady place and rest for an hour.

After what had passed at table I felt utterly miserable.  They had allowed so offensive an opinion about my father to escape, that it was torture to me to remain any longer in their company.

A little beyond the house, the hill sloped down into a narrow valley, with birches and willows on the ridge on both sides, and among them there flowed over the flint stones a clear, twinkling little brook, in which glided a trout or two.  While the others slept, I went up along the bank, and lay down to brood in solitude over my sorrow.

I do not know how long I had lain thus; but when I looked up, Susanna sat there in great agitation.  She thought they had behaved badly towards me, she said, and then, as though she could not bear to see me distressed, she silently stroked the hair back from my forehead again and again.

There was a warmth in the little hand and an eloquence in her face as she struggled to keep back her tears, that my heart, so hungering after affection, could not withstand.

I do not know how it came about, but I only remember that I stood and pressed her passionately to my heart, with my cheek against hers, and begged her to love me, only a little, and I would love her without measure the whole of my life.  I remember, too, that she answered “Yes,” and that we both cried.

A little while after we stood hand in hand, smiling and looking at one another.  A new thought had simultaneously come to us both—­that now we were engaged.  Susanna was the first to give it expression, and said, as she looked at me out of the depths of her faithful blue eyes, that from this time I must always remember that she was fond of me, however unkind the others were.

We heard them calling us, and—­what we had never thought of doing before—­Susanna hurried on by herself a little way, so that we each came back to the others alone.

* * * * *

It was far on into the morning of the next day, when Anne Kvaen roused me with a shake, as she had been accustomed to do since I was a child, and told me that my father had started that morning for Tromsoe.  He had been up to my room before he went, and when he came down again said that I lay smiling in my sleep, and “looked so happy, poor boy”!

It was very seldom that any sympathetic words came from my father, so these are imprinted on my memory.