After all, the child with her warm-hearted forgiveness, and her scanty knowledge of facts, was perhaps a good deal nearer the truth than Sigrid. Certainly Blanche was not the ideal of her dreams, but she was very far from being the hopelessly depraved character that Sigrid deemed her; she was a woman who had sinned very deeply, but she was not utterly devoid of heart, and there were gleams of good in her to which the Norwegian girl, in her hot indignation, was altogether blind. Sigrid was not faultless, and as with Frithiof, so there lingered too with her a touch of the fierce, unforgiving spirit which had governed their Viking ancestors. More than once that morning as she moved about her household tasks she said under her breath—“I wish that woman were dead!—I wish she were dead!” “You don’t look well this morning, Mr. Falck,” said the foreman, a cheerful, bright-eyed, good-hearted old man, who had managed to bring up a large family on his salary, and to whom Frithiof had often applied for advice on the subject of domestic economy. The two liked each other now cordially, and worked well together, Foster having altogether lost the slight prejudice he had at first felt against the foreigner. “We were up late last night,” said Frithiof, by way of explanation. But the old man was shrewd and quick-sighted, and happening later on to be in Mr. Boniface’s private room, he seized the opportunity to remark: “We shall have Mr. Falck knocking up again, sir, if I’m not mistaken: he is looking very ill to-day.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Mr. Boniface. “You were quite right to tell me, Foster. We will see what can be done.” And the foreman knew that there was no favoritism in this speech, for Mr. Boniface considered the health of his employees as a matter of the very highest importance, and being a Christian first and a tradesman afterward, did not consider money-making to be the great object of life. Many a time good old Foster himself had been sent down for a few days at the seaside with his family, and it was perhaps a vivid remembrance of the delights of West Codrington that made him add as he left the room: “He looks to me, sir, as if he needed bracing up.” Mr. Boniface was much of the same opinion when he noticed Frithiof later on in the day. A thoroughly good salesman the Norwegian had always been—clear-headed, courteous, and accurate; but now the look of effort which he had borne for some time before his illness was clearly visible, and Mr. Boniface seized the first chance he could get of speaking to him alone. About five o’clock there came a lull in the tide of customers; Darnell, the man at the opposite counter, had gone to tea, and Frithiof had gone back to his desk to enter some songs in the order-list. “Frithiof,” said Mr. Boniface, coming over to him and dropping the somewhat more formal style of address which he generally used toward him during business hours, “you have got one of your bad headaches.”