d his father
standing in sedate gravity on the poop.

Suffice it to say that the joy culminated at night, as human joys not
unfrequently do, in a feast, at which, as a matter of course, the whole
story of the arrival and settlement in Vinland was told over again to
the newcomers, as if it had never been told before. But there was this
advantage in the telling, that instead of all being told by Thorward,
each man gave his own version of his own doings, or, at all events,
delegated the telling to a friend who was likely to do him justice.
Sometimes one or another undertook that friendly act, without having it
laid upon him. Thus, Krake undertook to relate the discovery of the
grapes by Tyrker, and Tyrker retaliated by giving an account of the
accident in connexion with a mud-hole that had happened to Krake. This
brought out Biarne, who went into a still more minute account of that
event with reference to its bearing on Freydissa, and that gentle woman
revenged herself by giving an account of the manner in which Hake had
robbed Biarne of the honour of killing a brown bear, the mention of
which ferocious animal naturally suggested to Olaf the brave deed of his
dear pet the black bull, to a narrative of which he craved and obtained
attention. From the black bull to the baby was an easy and natural
transition--more so perhaps than may appear at first sight--for the bull
suggested the cows, and the cows the milk, which last naturally led to
thoughts of the great consumer thereof.

It is right to say here, however, that the baby was among the first
objects presented to Leif and his friends after their arrival; and great
was the interest with which they viewed this first-born of the American
land. The wrinkles, by the way, were gone by that time. They had been
filled up so completely that the place where they once were resembled a
fair and smooth round ball of fresh butter, with two bright blue holes
in it, a knob below them, and a ripe cherry underneath that.

Snorro happened to be particularly amiable when first presented to his
new friends. Of course he had not at that time reached the crowing or
smiling age. His goodness as yet was negative. He did not squall; he
did not screw up his face into inconceivable formations; he did not grow
alarmingly red in the face; he did not insist on having milk, seeing
that he had already had as much as he could possibly hold--no, he did
none of these things, but lay in Gudrid's a