for a rainy day.

CHAPTER II

BEFORE THE BIRTH

The children were now out of their care--that is to say, all the
eight of them. Soeren and Maren were now no longer young. The wear
and tear of time and toil began to be felt; and it would have been
good to have had something as a stand-by. Soerine, the youngest, was
as far as that goes, also out of their care, in that she was grown
up and ought long ago to have been pushed out of the nest; but there
was a reason for her still remaining at home supported by her old
parents.

She was very much spoiled, this girl--as the youngest can easily be;
she was delicate and bashful with strangers. But, as Maren thought,
when one has given so many children to the world, it was pleasant to
keep one of them for themselves; nests without young ones soon
become cold. Soeren in the main thought just the same, even if he did
grumble and argue that one woman in the house was more than enough.
They were equally fond of children. And hearing so seldom from the
others they clung more closely to the last one. So Soerine remained
at home and only occasionally took outside work in the hamlet or at
the nearest farms behind the downs. She was supposed to be a pretty
girl, and against this Soeren had nothing to say: but what he could
see was that she did not thrive, her red hair stood like a flame
round her clear, slightly freckled forehead, her limbs were fragile,
and strength in her there was none. When speaking to people she
could not meet their eyes, her own wandered anxiously away.

The young boys from the hamlet came wooing over the downs and hung
round the hut--preferably on the warm nights; but she hid herself
and was afraid of them.

"She takes after the bad side of the family," said Soeren, when he
saw how tightly she kept her window closed.

"She takes after the fine side," said the mother then. "Just you
wait and see, she will marry a gentleman's son."

"Fool," growled Soeren angrily and went his way: "to fill both her
own and the girl's head with such rubbish!"

He was fond enough of Maren, but her intellect had never won his
respect. As the children grew up and did wrong in one way or
another, Soeren always said: "What a fool the child is--it takes
after its mother." And Maren, as years went on, bore patiently with
this; she knew quite as well as Soeren that it was not intellect that
counted.

Two or three times in the week, Soerine went up town with a load of
fis