ts out of Barbara's hand. He had taken his straw hat off his curly
hair for the heat, and looked so nice and handsome.

Silla hardly dared look up at him, and only heard something about
freckles not being anything to mind when one had such dark eyes, when,
with head in advance, she rushed out of the door.

Barbara's opinion afterwards about Silla's behaviour--her having all at
once turned crimson, and rushed away at a few innocent words from such a
well-meaning and handsome man as Ludvig Veyergang--her son heard the
same evening. A young girl ought to stand modestly, and not go on like
that: if she did, it was a sure way of getting all that could be called
man-folk at her heels.

Was she anything for Nikolai--that awkward, dark, long girl, who ran
about in that bodice that was too short for her, looking like a
half-peeled, bent prawn in the back, and went balancing along the edge
of the gutter, as if she were going to be a tightrope dancer--without
any education? Upon her word, if it had been any other than Ludvig
Veyergang, she would have had him peeping after her at every corner.

"But, do you know, Nikolai, it suddenly came into my head while he stood
there, that here was the person who both could and would help me with
those fifteen dollars I still want so badly. But he was gone before I
could collect myself."

"Him? N--no, mother! I'll get them for you, if you'll only wait a
little; and I think you can use my money as well as his."

"Well, if I hadn't got you, Nikolai!" sighed Barbara, moved; "and now
you shall have some coffee that's good, and new cinnamon-sticks with it,
that I didn't get sold to-day."

"No, thanks all the same, mother," he answered, gloomily: he was already
at the door.

Later in the evening he succeeded in meeting Silla. She was so merry and
laughing this evening.

"I ran away; didn't look at him at all. Would you have liked me to stay,
perhaps?" she said, playfully.

He was disarmed for the moment, she laughed so confidingly.

But as he went down, he still saw Veyergang's insolent, half-closed
eyes, and the curl coming out beneath his hat, and--he could not help
it--he felt as if it were twined round his finger!

That she chattered so gaily did not please him, nor yet that whenever he
made time to go up in the evening she came down breathless from the
garden, and was always full of whether young Veyergang had been there or
not, what he had said, and what she had thought, and whet