then a long list of household
necessaries required from Arendal, and Carl said that if some one would
go with him in the boat the next morning to help him with the parcels,
he would execute her commissions himself. When Madame Beck suggested
Elizabeth he eagerly assented; but the colour rushed into Elizabeth's
cheeks, and with an angry toss of her head, which she didn't make any
attempt to conceal, she left the room.

As he was standing alone outside some little time after, she came up to
him, and said, looking him straight in the face--

"I don't go into Arendal with you, Herr Beck."

"No?--and why not, Elizabeth?" he asked, with affected indifference, and
trying to meet her look.

"I don't go," she repeated, her voice trembling with pride and
anger--"that is all I have to say;" and she turned from him, and left
him gazing after her, partly in confusion, and partly in admiration of
the magnificently proud way in which she crossed the turf to the house
again.

The expedition was given up; and in spite of Carl's _finesse_, it came
out inadvertently that it was on account of Elizabeth having refused to
go alone in the boat with him, which Madam Beck found very commendable
on her part. Indeed she ought to have known herself, she said, that it
was scarcely proper; but at the same time, she was decidedly of opinion
that the more becoming course for Elizabeth would have been to speak to
her mistress first.

CHAPTER XI.

The house in the town was undergoing repairs this year, which kept the
family out in the country until rather late in the autumn. But the
glorious September days prolonged the summer, and they could still sit
out on the steps in the evening and enjoy the beauty and the sentiment
of the season, and the rich variety of the autumn tints reflected on the
still waters of the Sound.

The members of Carl's commission, with their president, were invited out
there one day, and it was made a great occasion, all the resources of
the house being brought into requisition to do them honour.

Carl, although the youngest member of the Commission, and really only
included in it to make up the required number, had been fortunate enough
to distinguish himself upon it; and his sisters even thought that there
might be a question of an order for him--that distinction so coveted in
Norway--if they made love sufficiently to the president. Carl professed
to be quite superior to a mere external decoration of the kind