“No, it was a near chance, too, I can tell you!” She looked round, and said in a cautious whisper:  “Mother doesn’t know but that I lay and turned over in my bed at home all Midsummer night.  She went to eat St. John’s porridge with aunt out at Asker, and I was to stay at home, and iron; but at nine o’clock, I said good-bye and went my way.  Oh Nikolai!”—­she clapped her hands, laughing—­“you should have heard how she scolded yesterday morning when she came back, because I was still in bed!  Did you hear that we were treated to punch, too?”

“Who gave it you?”

“Ah, wouldn’t you like to know!  But, Nikolai, you won’t tell.  It was a certain person who treated us.”

“Indeed!”

“He came up to see that they did not light the bonfire too near the wood.  Yes, you must know, Nikolai, that it was no less a person than young Veyergang!  There was a Midsummer party at his father’s, and they were to see the fire from the stairs at exactly half-past eleven.

“And then he treated them to punch?  You too?”

“It was just me!  ‘Her with the black eyes,’ he said.”

“Perhaps he has spoken to you before, too?”

“Yes, indeed; he knows perfectly well that my name is Silla.  I meet him every single day, you must know.”

Nikolai made a movement as if he were bringing down a hammer on the hillside.  “Indeed!”

“Last Saturday in the office, when he had reckoned a krone too much in the pass-book, he said I could keep it and spend it on cakes.”

“Ha! ha!  Did he say that?  Wonderful, how kind he is!” Nikolai said this with something that was meant for laughter.  “The cook is very kind, too, when she feeds the goose so as to get hold of it!”

He stood with one arm round the gate-post, looking at her; she had grown so pretty and elegant, and almost taller since he had seen her last.  “A young girl who doesn’t even know that she is pretty.”

Silla pouted; her whole expression was one of supercilious disavowal.

“If they offer her a cake, or a handkerchief, or a little fun, she stretches out her neck and runs up.  I should think you might understand that, Silla, from all you see round you!  How many of them, I should like to know, will ever come to be the wife of an honest working-man?  They manage to dance a few times, and then it’s all over.  And they wanted to be just as kind to you now, Silla!  That Veyergang is on the watch for you!  If I’m not on the watch for him——­” He suddenly looked pale and ugly.

“What are you thinking of, Nikolai?  Don’t go on like that!”

“You may well say what was I thinking of, to stand there grinding and filing away the whole month at my probation work, and then let you go up there among that pack of wolves.  But I was born like that—­that everything should go wrong with me!”

Silla stood, as she always did when Nikolai put on this tone, downcast and dispirited, her slender figure bending forwards, and her eyes on the ground.