t is quite likely that they do, Miss Krog." He laughed.

"Is there anything to laugh about in that?"

"There is certainly nothing to cry about."

He was in a very jovial mood, and would fain have put his arm round her
and danced down to the pier, as many of the others were doing. But Mary
warded him off.

"I was very sorry to hear it," she said.

Then he understood that she was in earnest.

"The fact is, Miss Krog, that Norwegians, generally speaking, don't know
what obedience and discipline are. During the short time we have them
under command, we must teach them."

"Teach them in what way?"

"In small things, of course."

"By plaguing them about small things?"

"Exactly."

"Giving orders for which they see no necessity?"

"Precisely. They must learn to give up reasoning. They must obey. And
what they do, they must do properly; exactly as it should be done."

Mary did not answer. She addressed another couple who now made up to
them, and continued doing so till they all reached the pier.

On board the steamer she noticed that Joergen Thiis was out of humour.
When they landed, he was not standing at the gangway. Without any
previous arrangement, the whole party accompanied her home to the house
on the market-place. They sang and shouted under the windows until she
came out on the balcony and threw flowers down on them--those she had
brought home with her and any more she could find. Then they dispersed,
laughing and joking.

As they were going off, she looked for Joergen; he was not there. This
vexed her; she felt that she had rewarded him ill for one of the most
delightful days in her life.

Entertainments, large and small, followed one on the other. But Joergen
Thiis was absent from them all. He had first gone home to see his
parents, then to Christiania. Mary had never devoted much thought to
Joergen Thiis, but now that he kept away, she could not help remembering
that she had chiefly him to thank for the happy meeting with the young
people of her own age. And that remarkable toast of his--"fidelity to
the ideal"--at the time he proposed it she had merely thought: How
sentimental Joergen Thiis can be! Now she thought: Perhaps it was an
allusion to me? She was accustomed to such exaggerations; and she did
not care in the least for Joergen Thiis. But when she remembered how
deeply in love he had fallen at their first meeting, and how all these
years he had been exactly the same whenever and wherever