too hard on him," said my mother. "So this Frey had a
wife whose name was Freya, and the child says that the old pagans
considered them as the gods of love and marriage, and worshipped them as
such; and that all young damsels were in the habit of addressing
themselves to Freya in their love adventures, and of requesting her
assistance. He told me, and he quite frightened me when he said it, that
a certain night ceremony, in which I took part in my early youth, and
which is the affair to which I have alluded, was in every point
heathenish, being neither more nor less than an invocation to this Freya,
the wife of the old pagan god."

"And what ceremony might it be?" demanded my father. "It is getting
something dark," he added, glancing around.

"It is so," said my mother; "but these tales, you know, are best suited
to the dark hour. The ceremony was rather a singular one; the child,
however, explains it rationally enough. He says that this Freya was not
only a very comely woman, but also particularly neat in her person, and
that she invariably went dressed in snow-white linen."

"And how came the child to know all this?" demanded my father.

"Oh, that's his affair. I am merely repeating what he tells me. He
reads strange books and converses with strange people. What he says,
however, upon this matter, seems sensible enough. This Freya was fond of
snow-white linen."

"And what has that to do with the story?"

"Everything. I have told you that the young maidens were in the habit of
praying to her and requesting her favour and assistance in their love
adventures, which it seems she readily granted to those whom she took any
interest in. Now the readiest way to secure this interest and to procure
her assistance in any matter of the heart, was to flatter her on the
point where she was the most sensible. Whence the offering."

"And what was the offering?"

"It was once a common belief that the young maiden who should wash her
linen white in pure running water and should 'watch' it whilst drying
before a fire from eleven to twelve at night, would, at the stroke of
midnight, see the face of the man appear before her who was destined to
be her husband, and the child says that this was the '_Wake of Freya_'."

"I have heard of it before," said my father, "but under another name. So
you were engaged in one of these watchings."

"It was no fault of mine," said my mother; "for, as I told you, I was
very young,