How easily she started to-night!--Hazel answered without looking up--
'No, she wouldn't. Excuse me! She asked me to ask you.'
The girl had not found her feet yet, nor got clear of her bewilderment. And so, before she more than half knew what she was about she had taken the book and was reading--absolutely reading aloud to those two!--the ninety-first Psalm. Aloud, it was; but only because the voice was so wonderfully clear and sweet-toned could they have heard a word. As it was, neither listener lost one.
They knelt then, and Gyda uttered a prayer sweet enough to follow the Psalm. A little louder than Wych Hazel's low key, but not less quiet in tone. It was not long; she took those two, as it were, in the arms of her love, and presented them as candidates for all the blessing of the Psalm; making her plea for the two, somehow, a compound and homogeneous one.
The sun was down: it was time to get to horse--for the riders. Gyda's farewells were very affectionate in feeling, though also very quiet in manner.
'Will you come to see me again?' she asked of Wych Hazel, while Rollo was gone out to see to the horses.
'Will you let me? I should like to come.'
'Then you'll come,' said Gyda. She had shaken hands with Rollo before. But now when he came in for Wych Hazel he went up to where Gyda was standing, bent down and kissed her.
'Miss Kennedy, have you said "Tak för maden?" '
'I? No. How should I?' said Wych Hazel; 'is it a spell?'
'Come here,' said he, laughing. 'You must shake hands with Gyda and say, "Tak för maden;" that is, "Thanks for the meat." That is Norwegian good manners, and you are in a Norwegian house. Come and say it.'
She came shyly, trying to laugh too, and again held out her hand; stammering a little over the unaccustomed syllables, but rather because they were prescribed than because they were difficult. Certainly if there was a spell in the air that night Wych Hazel thought it had got hold of her.
'That's proper,' said Rollo, 'and now we'll go. It ought to have been said when we rose from table; but better late than never. That's your first lesson in Norse.'
Rollo had been in a sort of quiet, gay mood all the afternoon. Out of the house and in the saddle this mood seemed to be exchanged for a different one. He was silent, attending to his business with only a word here and there, alert and grave. The words to the ear, however, were free and pleasant as ever. At the bottom of the hill, in the meadow, he came close to Wych Hazel's side.