"Do you think there will ever be anybody come in that way to me?" "Of course, there will!" "Nonsense! Ah, Eli? If he took me round the waist?" She hid her face. Then they laughed again; and there was much whispering and tittering. Soon the girls went away; they had not seen either Arne or the axe and jacket, and he was glad of it. A few days after, he gave Opplands-Knut a little farm on Kampen. "You shall not be lonely any longer," Arne said. That winter Arne went to the parsonage for some time to do carpentry; and both the girls were often there together. When Arne saw them, he often wondered who it might be that now came to woo Eli Böen. One day he had to drive for the clergyman's daughter and Eli; he could not understand a word they said, though he had very quick ears. Sometimes Mathilde spoke to him; and then Eli always laughed and hid her face. Mathilde asked him if it was true that he could make verses. "No," he said quickly; then they both laughed; and chattered and laughed again. He felt vexed; and afterwards when he met them seemed not to take any notice of them. Once he was sitting in the servants' hall while a dance was going on, and Mathilde and Eli both came to see it. They stood together in a corner, disputing about something; Eli would not do it, but Mathilde would, and she at last gained her point. Then they both came over to Arne, courtesied, and asked him if he could dance. He said he could not; and then both turned aside and ran away, laughing. In fact, they were always laughing, Arne thought; and he became brave. But soon after, he got the clergyman's foster-son, a boy of about twelve, to teach him to dance, when no one was by. Eli had a little brother of the same age as the clergyman's foster-son. These two boys were playfellows; and Arne made sledges, snow-shoes and snares for them; and often talked to them about their sisters, especially about Eli. One day Eli's brother brought Arne a message that he ought to make his hair a little smoother. "Who said that?" "Eli did; but she told me not to say it was she." A few days after, Arne sent word that Eli ought to laugh a little less. The boy brought back word that Arne ought by all means to laugh a little more. Eli's brother once asked Arne to give him something that he had written. He complied, without thinking any more about the matter. But in a few days after, the boy, thinking to please Arne, told him that Eli and Mathilde liked his writing very much. "Where, then, have they seen any of it?" "Well, it was for them, I asked for some of it the other day." Then Arne asked the boys to bring him something their sisters had written. They did so; and he corrected the errors in the writing with his carpenter's pencil, and asked the boys to lay it in some place where their sisters might easily find it. Soon after, he found the paper in his jacket pocket; and at the foot was written, "Corrected by a conceited fellow."