Page:Tales of two countries.djvu/215

Rh candle in hand, and called after him cordially, "Good-night—happy to see you again."

"Thanks!" shouted Hans from below; but he vowed in his inmost soul that he would never set foot in that house again.—

—When the old man returned to the parlour, he found his daughter busy opening the windows.

"What are you doing that for?" asked the captain.

"I'm airing the room after him," answered Miss Betty.

"Come, come, Betty, you are really too hard upon him. But I must admit that the young gentleman did not improve upon closer acquaintance. I don't understand young people nowadays."

Thereupon the captain retired to his bedroom, after giving his daughter the usual evening exhortation, "Now don't sit up too long."

When she was left alone, Miss Betty put out the lamp, moved the flowers away from the corner window, and seated herself on the window-sill with her feet upon a chair.

On clear moonlight evenings she could descry a little strip of the fiord between two high houses. It was not much; but it was a glimpse of the great highway that leads to the south, and to foreign lands.

And her desires and longings flew away, following the same course which has wearied the wings of so many a longing—down the narrow fiord to the south where the horizon is wide, where the heart expands and the thoughts grow great and daring.