cancy. When Balder asked what she was thinking about, she blushed
crimson and laughed in an embarrassed way, but the next instant her
face again wore a strangely quiet expression, such as no one had ever
seen before.

Even Edwin, who usually noticed her but little, remarked her altered
manner. "Our little house swallow is thinking of building a nest," said
he. "You'll see, Balder, before next spring she'll leave us to become
her own mistress. It's a pity! I can't imagine the tun without this
wandering ray of sunlight."

Balder was silent. He had long been uneasy about the matter. Little as
he was in the habit of thinking of himself, this time, with a joyous
terror that for some moments threatened to burst his heart, he could
not help believing that he was the author of this change. On the very
day Franzelius bade them farewell, the young girl had asked him to lend
her Schiller's poems. She had heard so much about them, she wanted to
see if they would please her as well as her cousins and the head
journeyman. The book was in Balder's locked drawer; he had pressed in
it a flower from a small bouquet she had once brought him when she came
home from a walk. The verses he had written on her birthday were also
there, but he did not think of them when he took out the volume.
Afterwards, when it was too late, he had recollected them, and as the
verses expressed somewhat plainly what for years he had carefully
hidden in his heart, he could scarcely doubt that they would now do
their duty and reveal all. Probably it might have been so, but for that
twilight hour in the shop, when the state of another equally reserved
soul had suddenly become clear to her. There was only room for one
thought at a time in her head and heart, and therefore, as her love for
literature was not very great, she had not taken out the borrowed book
she had placed in her work table, and had no suspicion what a secret
she would have learned. Even in her leisure hours, she did not have
much time for reading. Whenever she was left to herself, she eagerly
knitted the before-mentioned stockings, whose unusual size could not
fail to remind her for many days of the lucky fellow destined to own
them.

Balder, however, who knew nothing of all this, could not help
interpreting in his own favor the altered manner of the child he
secretly loved, especially as since he required her care, she had
become at once more devoted and more reserved. His first emotion at
th