it will explain him to you better than anything I
could say."

II.

The Oddsons were certainly a happy family though not by any means a
harmonious one. The excellent pastor, who was himself neutrally good,
orthodox, and kind-hearted, had often, in the privacy of his own
thought, wondered what hidden ancestral influences there might have
been at work in giving a man so peaceable and inoffensive as himself two
daughters of such strongly defined individuality. There was Augusta, the
elder, who was what Arnfinn called "indiscriminately reformatory," and
had a universal desire to improve everything, from the Government down
to agricultural implements and preserve jars. As long as she was content
to expend the surplus energy, which seemed to accumulate within her
through the long eventless winters, upon the Zulu Mission, and other
legitimate objects, the pastor thought it all harmless enough; although,
to be sure, her enthusiasm for those naked and howling savages did at
times strike him as being somewhat extravagant. But when occasionally,
in her own innocent way, she put both his patience and his orthodoxy to
the test by her exceedingly puzzling questions, then he could not, in
the depth of his heart, restrain the wish that she might have been more
like other young girls, and less ardently solicitous about the fate of
her kind. Affectionate and indulgent, however, as the pastor was,
he would often, in the next moment, do penance for his unregenerate
thought, and thank God for having made her so fair to behold, so pure,
and so noble-hearted.

Toward Arnfinn, Augusta had, although of his own age, early assumed a
kind of elder-sisterly relation; she had been his comforter during all
the trials of his boyhood; had yielded him her sympathy with that eager
impulse which lay so deep in her nature, and had felt forlorn when life
had called him away to where her words of comfort could not reach him.
But when once she had hinted this to her father, he had pedantically
convinced her that her feeling was unchristian, and Inga had playfully
remarked that the hope that some one might soon find the open Polar Sea
would go far toward consoling her for her loss; for Augusta had glorious
visions at that time of the open Polar Sea. Now, the Polar Sea, and
many other things, far nearer and dearer, had been forced into uneasy
forgetfulness; and Arnfinn was once more with her, no longer a child,
and no longer appealing to her for aid