Chapter 3

Salvé came out to the rock again the next autumn, after a voyage to
Liverpool and Havre.

At first he was rather shy, although his father and old Jacob Torungen
had in the interval, in spite of that little affair of the previous
year, been on the best of terms. The white bear, however, as he called
him, seemed to have altogether forgotten what had passed; and with the
girl he was very easily reconciled--she had learnt now not to tell
everything to her grandfather.

Whilst the lighterman and old Jacob enjoyed a heart-warming glass
together in the house, Salvé carried the things up to the cellar,
Elizabeth following him up and down every time, and the conversation
meanwhile going round all the points of the compass, so to speak. After
she had asked him about Havre de Grace, where he had been, and about
America, where he had not been,--if his captain's wife was as fine as a
man-of-war captain's; and then if he wouldn't like one day to marry a
fine lady,--she wanted at last to know, from the laughing sailor lad, if
the officers' wives were ever allowed to be with them in war.

Her face had of late acquired something wonderfully attractive in its
expression--such a seriousness would come over it sometimes, although
she continued as childlike as ever; and such eyes as hers were, at all
events in Salvé's experience, not common. At any rate, after this, he
invariably accompanied his father upon these expeditions.

The last time he was out there he told her about the dances on shore at
Sandvigen, and took care to give her to understand that the girls made
much of him there--but he was tired now of dancing with them.

She was very curious on this subject, and extracted from him that he had
had two tremendous fights that winter. She looked at him in terror, and
asked rather hesitatingly--

"But had they done anything to you?"

"Oh, no! all dancing entertainments have a little extra dance like that
to wind up with. They merely wanted to dance with the girl I had asked
first."

"Is it so dangerous, then? What sort of a girl was she?--I mean, what
was her name?"

"Oh, one was called Marie, and the other was Anne--Herluf Andersen's
daughter. They were pretty girls, I can tell you. Anne had a white
brooch and earrings, and danced more smoothly than ever you saw a cutter
sail. Mate George said the same."

The upshot of this conversation was, that she found out that the girls
in Arendal, and in the ports generally where he had touched, were all
well dressed; and the next time he returned from Holland, he promised he
would bring with him a pair of morocco-leather shoes with silver buckles
for her.

With this