Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/318

write a letter. It was to Ole, and in it the girl expressed quite simply her reasons for taking the step that was to change both their lives. She loved Hjorth, she said, and she knew that Ole loved her so dearly that he would want her to do what pleased her most. She added that she had known Hjorth one year for every week that Ole had known her. The meaning of this she was certain Ole would understand.

"I am not sure whether I should," demurred Frue Berg, as she eyed the white frilling in her grown, to see that it was clean. Johanna looked back at her. She was just leaving the room for her own.

"The train leaves in half-an-hour," she said, and went away. "If it's to be done, it must be done quickly," muttered the farmer's wife to herself. "I never could think matters over. And it's a match, quite a good and high match for Johanna. She loves the deacon. He'll rise in the world for certain."

As the woman and the girl travelled to Vik, Johanna was speechless, but her aunt was extremely voluble.

"I justify myself for what I am doing," said she, "by recollecting the days of my own courtship. My position was exactly that of yours, Johanna, only that in England we do not think of betrothals so solemnly as you do here in Norway. What I said to your uncle was that though I had been engaged to Tom Wills for a month to please my mother, I should now consider myself. And it ended in our making a runaway match, very much as you are doing, my dear."

Johanna turned her head from the window, whence she had been gazing over the great expanse of moorland, which is a peculiarity of that corner of the southern seaboard, and her serene eyes met those of her aunt, who forthwith continued her rather nervous harangue.

"What