Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/300

called taken a fancy to him, and a very embarrassing fancy it had been, displayed in bunches of flowers and bowls of wild fruit which she had deposited upon his desk, when she brought her little cousins Pauline and Lauritz to school. He had been compelled to be almost rude when she ran after him across the mead one evening, to tell him that the fish were rising in a favourite pool, and to imply a lie when he remarked that that was no business of his. Also he had purposely neglected her flowers, and pushed the bowls of fruit aside.

No; he should not regret Johanna for a moment. She was a forward child; just that.

So during the service that came next he paid no more attention to Johanna Tubering than a deacon should to any member of the congregation. Neither did he think less of his own vastly important share in the ceremony. He was conscious all the while that he was the cynosure of every eye there, and when he stood up to answer the priest, who in a few fatherly words had bade him God-speed in his own name and that of the people, the very modesty and repression of his demeanour was the result of a carefully thought out and cultivated attitude of mind and manner.

Johanna's eyes, on the contrary, were frankly turned towards him throughout the ceremony. She sat with her aunt and the other women on the left side of the church; the men occupying the pews upon the right. She thought of nothing, this child Johanna, but that he was going, and would God bless him? "Oh, God, Father in Heaven, bless him, I pray Thee. Oh, my God, bless him. Oh, Saviour Christ, I beseech Thee to bless him, Dear God, bless him." Such were her prayers, what time the old priest besought the Lord for all sorts and conditions of men.

And below the oft-repeated supplication came the accompanyingadded