She looked round again eagerly, while the elongated shadow across the snow imitated her slender figure and swaying movements.

“Oh, and they promised to wait for me!”

“Well, I suppose they’ve only gone.”

“Only?  They thought I was going out with them this evening, and if they haven’t been here already, they may perhaps stand and wait, for I must go in, you see, or else I shall have mother coming out into the street after me.  Listen, Nik!  If you were nice “—­she took hold of his jacket, and pushed him backwards and forwards—­“you would find them and tell them—­can you tell them properly?—­that I must be good and stay at home this evening, but hurrah for a holiday to-morrow and the day after!  Say that mother will be washing at the Antonisens’ the whole of the end of the week, and they’ll quite understand it.  But be sure you find them, Nikolai, so that they won’t blame me.”

Nikolai was not insensible to her amiability, nor yet to her liveliness and prettiness; but it had just the opposite effect.  While she stood pulling his jacket, he heard the voices on the high-road all the time.

“That’s it, that’s it!  You want to get quite free now, Silla.  Well, just let them drag you out among them!  But that a respectable girl will let herself be drawn into such goings on!” he added, out of humour.

“A respectable girl?  Respectable girl!  May I ask what sort of fun she is to have then?  I really wonder, Nikolai, that you didn’t find a respectable girl for yourself who would walk with her back like a poker, and her arms under her shawl, and who only lets herself slide by accident as it were, when she comes to a slide—­daren’t even look out of the corner of her eye at a hand-sledge, because she’s so well-behaved!  It was a respectable one like that you ought to have had.  And then, when you were standing hammering all day in the smithy, and she was deep in her work standing on all fours with her head behind the wash-tub at home, I suppose that would be as you would like to have it.  But I can tell you, Nikolai, that if there isn’t to be any fun in this world, then good-bye and be rid of it.  I’ve had to sit shut up long enough at home.”

He shook his head.  “If only there weren’t all those wolves howling away there on the road.  But you see, they want to amuse themselves too; and—­and the insignificant ones have to take care of what they have, it seems to me—­and if you’re of the same mind, Silla, we’ll go in to your mother at once—­this very moment.”  He took her by the hand to carry out his intention.

“You must be mad, Nikolai,” she exclaimed in terror; the resolution was as terrible as it was unexpected.  “No, no, let it be,” she begged in an eager whisper.  “Think of mother!  Have you quite forgotten what mother is like?  It will be time enough when we’ve got something to marry on.”

“Time enough?  No, it’s not time enough for me, Silla.  I must try and get it said now.”