The Doctor did not say much this time either, but catching sight of my powder-horn, with a figure of Pan carved on it, he started to explain the myth of Pan.
“But,” said Edwarda suddenly, “what do you live on when it's closed season for all game?”
“Fish,” I said. “Fish mostly. But there's always something to eat.”
“But you might come up to us for your meals,” she said. “There was an Englishman here last year--he had taken the hut--and he often came to us for meals.”
Edwarda looked at me and I at her. I felt at the moment something touching my heart like a little fleeting welcome. It must have been the spring, and the bright day; I have thought it over since. Also, I admired the curve of her eyebrows.
She said something about my place; how I had arranged things in the hut. I had hung up skins of several sorts on the walls, and birds' wings; it looked like a shaggy den on the inside. She liked it. “Yes, a den,” she said.
I had nothing to offer my visitors that they would care about; I thought of it, and would have roasted a bird for them, just for amusement--let them eat it hunter's fashion, with their fingers. It might amuse them.
Edwarda told about the Englishman. An old man, an eccentric, who talked aloud to himself. He was a Roman Catholic, and always carried a little prayer-book, with red and black letters, about with him wherever he went.
“Was he an Irishman then?” asked the Doctor.
Edwarda blushed, and stammered and looked away.
After that she lost her liveliness. I felt sorry for her, and tried to put matters straight again. I said:
“No, of course you are right: he was an Englishman. Irishmen don't go travelling about in Norway.”
We agreed to row over one day and see the fish-drying grounds...
When I had seen my visitors a few steps on their way, I walked home again and sat down to work at my fishing gear. My hand-net had been hung from a nail by the door, and several of the meshes were damaged by rust; I sharpened up some hooks, knotted them to lengths of line, and looked to the other nets. How hard it seemed to do any work at all to-day! Thoughts that had nothing to do with the business in hand kept coming and going; it occurred to me that I had done wrong in letting Edwarda sit on the bed all the time, instead of offering her a seat on the bench. I saw before me suddenly her brown face and neck; she had fastened her apron a little low down in front, to be long-waisted, as was the fashion; the girlish contour of her thumb affected me tenderly, and the little wrinkles above the knuckle were full of kindliness. Her mouth was large and rich.