"Wicked, spiteful, ugly old thing!" sobbed Britta; "I'll never, never, never forgive her!" Then, running to Thelma, she caught her hand and kissed it affectionately. "Oh, my dear, my dear! To think she should have cursed you, what dreadful, dreadful wickedness! Oh!" and Britta looked volumes of wrath. "I could have beaten her black and blue!"
Her vicious eagerness was almost comic--every one laughed, including Thelma, though she pressed the hand of her little servant very warmly.
"Oh fie!" said Lorimer seriously. "Little girls mustn't whip their grandmothers; it's specially forbidden in the Prayer-book, isn't it, Phil?"
"I'm sure I don't know!" replied Errington merrily. "I believe there is something to the effect that a man may not marry his grandmother--perhaps that is what you mean?"
"Ah, no doubt!" murmured Lorimer languidly, as, with the others, he resumed his seat at the supper-table. "I knew there was a special mandate respecting one's particularly venerable relations, with a view to self-guidance in case they should prove troublesome, like Britta's good grand-mamma. What a frightfully picturesque mouthing old lady she is!"
"She is la petroleuse of Norway!" exclaimed Duprèz. "She would make an admirable dancer in the Carmagnole!"
Macfarlane, who had preserved a discreet silence throughout the whole scene, here looked up.
"She's just a screech-owl o' mistaken piety," he said. "She minds me o' a glowerin' auld warlock of an aunt o' mine in Glasgie, wha sits in her chair a' day wi' ae finger on the Bible. She says she's gaun straight to heaven by special invitation o' the Lord, leavin' a' her blood relations howlin' vainly after her from their roastin' fires down below. Ma certes! she'll give ye a good rousin' curse if ye like! She's cursed me ever since I can remember her,--cursed me in and out from sunrise to sunset,--but I'm no the worse for't as yet,--an' it's dootful whether she's any the better."
"And yet Lovisa Elsland used to be as merry and lissom a lass as ever stepped," said Güldmar musingly. "I remember her well when both she and I were young. I was always on the sea at that time,--never happy unless the waves tossed me and my vessel from one shore to another. I suppose the restless spirit of my fathers was in me. I was never contented unless I saw some new coast every six months or so. Well! . . . Lovisa was always foremost among the girls of the village who watched me leave the Fjord,--and however long or short a time I might be absent, she was certain to be on the shore when my ship came sailing home again. Many a joke I have cracked with her and her companions--and she was a bonnie enough creature to look at then, I tell you,--though now she is like a battered figure-head on a wreck. Her marriage, spoiled her temper,--her husband was as dark and sour a man as could be met with in all Norway, and when he and his fishing-boat sank in a squall off the Lofoden Islands, I doubt if she shed many tears for his loss. Her only daughter's husband went down in the same storm,--and he but three months wedded,--and the girl,--Britta's mother,--pined and pined, and even when her child was born took no sort of comfort in it. She died four years after Britta's birth--her death was hastened, so I have heard, through old Lovisa's harsh treatment,--anyhow the little lass she left behind her had no very easy time of it all alone with her grandmother,--eh Britta?"