d
his learning, he had attained to something quite grand and extraordinary
in Susanna's eyes.

When, after a drive of about six miles, they approached the
parsonage-house, they saw from all sides the little sledges issuing from
the passes of the valleys, and then hastening forward in the same
direction as themselves across the fields of snow. Steaming breath came
from the nostrils of the snorting horses, and merrily jingled the bells
in the clear air. Susanna was enraptured.

No less was she enraptured by the cordiality with which she saw herself
received at the parsonage--she, a foreign serving-maiden--by foreign,
wealthy, and respectable people. Susanna was, besides this, very curious
to see bow things looked, and how they went on, in a respectable
parsonage in Norway; and it was therefore very agreeable to her, when
the kind Madame Middelberg invited her to see the house, and allowed her
to be conducted by her eldest daughter, Thea Middelberg, everywhere,
from the cellar even to the garret. Susanna, after this, felt great
esteem for the arrangements in the parsonage-house; thought that she
could learn various things from it; other things, however, she thought
would have been better according to her Swedish method. Returned to the
company, Susanna found much to notice and much to reflect upon. For the
rest, she was through the whole of this day in a sort of mental
excitement. It seemed to her, as if she saw the picture of comfort and
happiness of which she had sometimes dreamed, here realised. It seemed
to her, that life amid these grand natural scenes and simple manners
must be beautiful. The relationship between parents and children,
between masters and servants, appeared so cordial, so patriarchal. She
heard the servants in the house of the clergyman call him and his wife,
father and mother; she saw the eldest daughter of the house assist in
waiting on the guests, and that so joyously and easily, that one saw
that she did it from her heart; saw a frank satisfaction upon all faces,
a freedom from care, and a simplicity in the behaviour of all; and all
this made Susanna feel quite light at heart, whilst it called forth a
certain tearful glance in her eye.

"Have you pleasure in flowers?" inquired the friendly Thea Middelberg;
and when Susanna declared that she had, she broke off the most beautiful
rose which bloomed in the window and gave to her.

But the greatest pleasure to Susanna was in the two youngest child