, just as I had heard it nine years before. The voices of both
had acquired that deeper, fuller meaning which life gives when it has
meaning itself; their skill, on the other hand, was about the same as of
old.

Any one who but a moment before might perhaps have found it difficult to
understand how these two had come together, only needed to be near them
while they sang. A lyric abandonment of feeling was common to both, and
where there was any difference of sentiment they were perfectly content
to waive it. They floated onward like two children in a boat, leaving
the dinner behind them to grow cold, the servants to become impatient,
the guest to think what he pleased, and the order of the house and their
own plans for the day to be upset.

In their singing there was no energy, no school, no delicate finish of
style of this simple number, which, moreover, they were doubtless
singing for the first time; but there was a smooth, lazy, happy gliding
over the melody. The light coloring of the voices blended together like
a caress; and there was a charm in the way it was done.

They sang verse after verse, and the longer they continued the better
they sang together, and the more joyously. When finally they were
through and the wife, with her somewhat labored step, walked into the
dining-room on my arm, and Atlung sauntered on before to give Stina the
key to the wine-cellar, there was no longer any question in Fru Atlung's
eyes, only joy, mild, beautiful joy, and her husband warbled like a
canary bird.

We sat down to table while he was still out, we waited an interminable
time for him; either he had not found Stina or she had not understood
him: he had gone himself to the cellar and had returned so covered with
dust and dirt that we could not help laughing. His wife, however, paused
in the midst of her laughter, and sat silent while he changed his
clothes and washed.

He swallowed spoonful after spoonful of the soup in greedy haste,
regained his spirits when his first hunger was satisfied, and began to
talk in one unbroken stream, until suddenly, while carving the roast, he
inquired for the boys. They had had their dinner; they could not wait so
long.

"Have you seen the boys?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied, and I spoke of their extreme artlessness, and what a
strong likeness I thought one bore to his and the other to his wife's
family.

"But," he interposed, "it is unfortunate that both families have
comparatively t