‘I know!’ said Gyda, softly.  ‘But it’s only me.’  And as if recognizing a bond which Wych Hazel did not, she lifted one little white hand in her two brown ones and kissed it.

‘Everybody shews me their hearts,’ she went on; ’but it’s all here,’ touching her breast, and meaning probably that it went no further.  ‘May I love my lad’s lady a little bit?’

A strangely humble, wistful, sweet look she bent on Hazel as she spoke, to which the girl herself, too dumbfounded and shaken off her feet to quite know where she was, could find no better answer than a full rush of bright drops to her eyes, coming she knew not whence; and then a deep suffusion of throat and cheeks and brow, but was much better recognized and said it meant to stay.  Her head went down again.

‘Now, it’s only me,’ said the old woman, quietly again.  But Rollo’s voice was heard from somewhere speaking her name, and she hurried out.  There was a little interval, and then she came back bearing dishes to set on the table.  Back and forth she went several times, and very likely had found more things to take up Rollo’s attention; for he came not until she had her board all ready and summoned him.  It was a well spread board when all was done.  Shallow dishes of porridge, piles of fladbrod, bowls of cream, peaches, and coffee.  And when Gyda with due care had made a cup for Wych Hazel and brought it to her hand, the little lady was obliged to confess that it was better than even Chickaree manufacture.  And the porridge was no brown farinaceous mass in a rough and crude state, but came to table in thin, gelatinous cakes, sweet and excellent when broken into the cream.  But if Wych Hazel had been afterwards put in the witness-box to tell what she had been eating, I think she would have refused to be sworn.  The sheer necessity of the case had made her hold up her head—­cool her cheeks she could not; but she took what was given her, and talked of it and praised it almost as steadily as if she had known what it was.  Only, as extreme timidity is with some people an unnerving thing, there were moments when, do what she would, her lips must be screened behind the cup, and words that she said which were almost hoarse from the extreme difficulty with which they were spoken.  As for a laugh, she tried it once.

She was served and tended with, it is hard to say whether most care or most pleasure, by both her companions.  Midway of the meal came a help to her shyness.

The door slowly opened and a girl stepped in.  She might have been fourteen or fifteen; she was tall enough for that; but the little figure was like a rail.  So slight, so thin, so little relieved by any sufficiency of drapery in her poor costume.  But the face was above all thin, pale, worn; with eyes that looked large and glassy from want and weariness.  She came in, but then stood still, looking at the party where she had expected to find only the old Norwegian woman.