What can you say, now, Marit?"
"I do not know."
"You do not know what you ought to answer?"
"Yes, indeed, I know that."
"Well, then?"
"May I say it?"
"Yes; of course you may say it."
"I care a great deal for that love of mine."
He stood aghast for a moment, recalling a hundred similar conversations
with similar results, then he shook his head, turned his back, and
walked away.
He picked a quarrel with the housemen, abused the girls, beat the large
dog, and almost frightened the life out of a little hen that had
strayed into the field; but to Marit he said nothing.
That evening Marit was so happy when she went up-stairs to bed, that
she opened the window, lay in the window-frame, looked out and sang.
She had found a pretty little love-song, and it was that she sang.
"Lovest thou but me,
I will e'er love thee,
All my days on earth, so fondly;
Short were summer's days,
Now the flower decays,--
Comes again with spring, so kindly.
"What you said last year
Still rings in my ear,
As I all alone am sitting,
And your thoughts do try
In my heart to fly,--
Picture life in sunshine flitting.
"Litli--litli--loy,
Well I hear the boy,
Sighs behind the birches heaving.
I am in dismay,
Thou must show the way,
For the night her shroud is weaving.
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