Part 12 (1/2)

”It's the weather-vane,” said Eli; and after a little while she added in a lower tone, as if to herself, ”it must have come unfastened.”

But Arne had been like one who wished to speak and could not. Now he said, ”Do you remember that tale about the thrushes?”

”Yes.”

”It was you who told it, indeed. It was a nice tale.”

”I often think there's something that sings when all is still,” she said, in a voice so soft and low that he felt as if he heard it now for the first time.

”It is the good within our own souls,” he said.

She looked at him as if she thought that answer meant too much; and they both stood silent a few moments. Then she asked, while she wrote with her finger on the window-pane, ”Have you made any songs lately?”

He blushed; but she did not see it, and so she asked once more, ”How do you manage to make songs?”

”Should you like to know?”

”Well, yes;--I should.”

”I store up the thoughts that other people let slip.”

She was silent for a long while; perhaps thinking she might have had some thoughts fit for songs, but had let them slip.

”How strange it is,” she said, at last, as though to herself, and beginning to write again on the window-pane.

”I made a song the first time I had seen you.”

”Where was that?”

”Behind the parsonage, that evening you went away from there;--I saw you in the water.”

She laughed, and was quiet for a while.

”Let me hear that song.”

Arne had never done such a thing before, but he repeated the song now:

”Fair Venevill bounded on lithesome feet Her lover to meet,” &c.[4]

[4] As on page 68.

Eli listened attentively, and stood silent long after he had finished. At last she exclaimed, ”Ah, what a pity for her!”

”I feel as if I had not made that song myself,” he said; and then stood like her, thinking over it.

”But that won't be my fate, I hope,” she said, after a pause.

”No; I was thinking rather of myself.”

”Will it be your fate, then?”