“Yes.”

“You must know that last year there was a long drought; almost all the young trees up here withered away, and in other places on the hillsides also, as you see.”  She pointed as she spoke.  “It looks so ugly as one comes into the bay.  I thought about that yesterday.  I thought also that you should not be here long before you saw that you had done us an injustice, for could anything be prettier than that little fir-tree down there in the hollow? just look at its colour; that is a healthy fellow! and these sturdy saplings, and that little gem there!” The tones of Helene’s voice betrayed the interest which she felt.  “But how that one over there has grown.”  She scrambled across to it, and he after her.  “Do you see? two branches already; and what branches!” They knelt down beside it.  “This boy has had parents of whom he can boast, for they have all had just as much and just as little shelter.  Oh! the disgusting caterpillars.”  She was down before the little tree at the side which was being spun over.  She cleared it, and got up to fetch some wet mould, which she laid carefully round the sprouts.  “Poor thing I it wants water, although it rained tremendously a little time ago.”

“Are you often up here?” he asked.

“It would all come to nothing if I were not!” She looked at him searchingly.  “You do not, perhaps, believe that this little tree knows me; every one of them, indeed.  If I am long away from them they do not thrive, but when I am often with them they flourish.”  She was on her knees, supporting herself with one hand, while with the other she pulled up some grass.  “The thieves,” said she, “which want to rob my saplings.”

If it had been a little person who had said this; a little person with lively eyes and a merry mouth—­but Helene was tall and stately; her eyes were not lively, but met one with a steady gaze.  Her mouth was large, and gave deliberate utterance to her thoughts.

Whoever has read Helene’s words quickly, hurriedly, must read them over again.  She spoke quietly and thoughtfully, each syllable distinct and musical.  She was not the same girl who had led the way by river and hill.  Then she seemed to glory in her strength; now her energy had changed to delicate feeling.

One of the most remarkable women in Scandinavia, who also had these two sides to her character, and made the fullest use of both, Johanne Luise Hejberg, once saw Helene when she had but just attained to womanhood.  She could not take her eyes off her; she never tired of watching her and listening to her.  Did the aged woman, then at the close of her life, recognise anything of her own youth in the girl?  Outwardly too they resembled each other.  Helene was dark, as Fru Hejberg had been; was about the same height, with the same figure, but stronger; had a large mouth, large grey eyes like hers, into which the same roguish look would start.  But the greatest likeness was to be found in their natures:  in Fru Hejberg’s expression when she was quiet and serious; in a certain motherliness which was the salient feature in her nature.