The girls came sauntering along in large groups, having
a few boys, mostly small ones, with them, who had gathered about them
on the road in order to appear like young men. When such a bevy of
girls arrived at the gard and one or two of the grown youths saw them,
the girls parted, flew into the passages or down in the garden, and had
to be dragged thence into the house, one by one. Some were so
excessively bashful that Marit had to be sent for, and then she came
out and insisted upon their entering. Sometimes, too, there appeared
one who had had no invitation and who had by no means intended to go
in, coming only to look on, until perhaps she might have a chance just
to take one single dance. Those whom Marit liked well she invited into
a small chamber, where her grandfather sat smoking his pipe, and her
grandmother was walking about. The old people offered them something
to drink and spoke kindly to them. Oyvind was not among those invited
in, and this seemed to him rather strange.
The best fiddler of the parish could not come until later, so meanwhile
they had to content themselves with the old one, a houseman, who went
by the name of Gray-Knut. He knew four dances; as follows: two spring
dances, a halling, and an old dance, called the Napoleon waltz; but
gradually he had been compelled to transform the halling into a
schottishe by altering the accent, and in the same manner a spring
dance had to become a polka-mazurka.
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