He now made a little speech, in which he said that he did not see anything very wrong in our loving one another, although we were indeed absurdly young.  He hoped, too—­and he had thought a great deal about it—­that our not revealing our engagement to our parents was excusable, as they would scarcely even look at the matter as really serious, and we might feel hurt.  He did not intend to be a receiver of secret love-letters, as Susanna had asked him, and that both for his own sake and for ours, because we ought to use the approaching two years of trial to see if there really were any truth in our love, or if it were only a childish fancy of the kind that afterwards evaporates.

With these words the old clerk good-naturedly left the room.

When we were alone, Susanna told me in a whisper why she had ventured to confide in the clerk.  She had heard at home that in his youth he had once been disappointed in love, and that that was the reason why he had never married, and had become so strange.  Then in eager haste she drew out of her pocket—­she still wore her old, short, blue-checked, every-day dress, but her hair “in grown-up fashion”—­a cross of small, blue beads.  She also drew from her pocket a silk cord which I was to wear round my neck nearest my heart.

With some further trouble she produced from the pocket that contained so much, a small pair of scissors.  With these she cut off a curl of my hair, just that black one on the temple, that she had long had her eye upon, she said, and which she meant to keep in her confirmation locket.  When I asked for one of hers that I “had long had my eye upon,” she said it was not necessary, as the bead cross she had given me was threaded on her own hair.

Then there was something I must promise her, which she had thought out while she sat sewing at home, for she thought of so much then.  It was, that when I became a student, I should give her a gold engagement ring with the inscription “David and Susanna” on one half of the inside, and on the other half there should be “like David and Jonathan.”  It was the disagreement between our parents that had made her think of this.

“But,” she broke off, “you are not listening to me, David?”

And, indeed, I was thinking about something else, and that was, whether I dared give her a farewell kiss:  I remembered last summer out among the Vaette Rocks.

At that moment there was a scraping of feet on the doorstep outside, which meant that the clerk thought our interview must soon come to an end, and, to my disappointment, Susanna hastened to hide the presents, which I still held in my hand, in my breast pocket.  She had just done this when the clerk came in, and said that now we must say good-bye to one another.

Susanna looked at the clerk, and then, pale, and with eyes full of tears, at me, as if the thought that we were to part now struck her for the first time.  She made a quick movement—­she evidently wanted to throw her arms round my neck, but restrained herself, because the clerk was present.