“Oh, I beg pardon,” exclaimed the forgetful girl.  “Let me attend to it.”

She went to the cupboard and brought out the sugar and a paper of ground cinnamon, and sprinkled a layer of each over the plates of mush.  Then she pressed into the middle of each a lump of butter which soon melted into a tiny yellow pond.

“I should like to hear some of these ideas of yours,” remarked the visitor to Signe, who had so far forgotten her manners as to be blowing her spoonful of mush before dipping it into the butter.

“I wish I were an artist,” said she, without seeming to notice his remarks.  “Ah, what pictures I would paint!  I would make them so natural that you could see the pine tops wave, and smell the breath of the woods as you looked at them.”

“You would put me in, standing on The Look-out blowing my lur, wouldn’t you?”

“Certainly.”

“And I have no doubt that we could hear the echoes ringing over the hills,” continued Hansine, soberly.

“Never mind, you needn’t make fun.  Yes, Hr.  Bogstad, I think we have some grand natural scenes.  I often climb up on the hills, and sit and look over the pines and the shining lake down towards home.  Then, sometimes, I can see the ocean like a silver ribbon, lying on the horizon.  I sit up there and gaze and think, as Hansine says, nearly all night.  I seem to be under a spell.  You know it doesn’t get dark all night now, and the air is so delicious.  My thoughts go out ’Over the high mountains,’ as Bjornson says, and I want to be away to hear and see what the world is and has to tell me.  A kind of sweet loneliness comes over me which I cannot explain.”

Hr.  Bogstad had finished his dish.  He, too, was under a spell—­the spell of a soft, musical voice.

“Then the light in the summer,” she continued.  “How I have wished to go north where the sun shines the whole twenty-four hours.  Have you ever seen the Midnight Sun, Hr.  Bogstad?”

“No; but I have been thinking of taking a trip up there this summer, if I can get some good company to go with me.  Wouldn’t you—­”

It was then that Signe hurriedly pushed her chair away and said:  “Thanks for the food.”

Next morning Signe was very busy.  She washed the wooden milk basins, scalded them with juniper tea, and then scoured them with sand.  She churned the butter and wanted to help with the cheese, but Hansine thought that she was not paying enough attention to their visitor, so she ordered her off to her lookout on the mountain.  Hr.  Bogstad would help her up the steep places; besides, he could tell her the names of the ferns and flowers, and answer the thousand and one questions which she was always asking.  So, of course, they had to go.