"What did that matter when I had her over at the window yonder!" answered the sick girl, and she cried in such a child-like way, that it seemed to Arne as though he had never before seen anything like it. "But you could not see her there," said Baard. "I could see the gard," answered she; and the mother added, hotly,-- "You do not understand such things at all." Then Baard said no more. "Now I can never go to the window!" said Eli. "I went there in the morning when I got up; in the evening I sat there in the moonlight: and I went there when I had no one else to go to. Mathilde, Mathilde!" She writhed in the bed, and again gave way to hysterical weeping. Baard sat down on a stool near by and watched her. But Eli did not get over this as soon as her parents may have expected. Toward evening they first saw that she was likely to have a protracted illness, the seeds of which had doubtless been gathering for some time; and Arne was called in to assist in carrying her up to her own room. She was unconscious, and lay very pale and still; the mother sat down beside her; the father stood at the foot of the bed and looked on; afterwards he went down to his work. Arne did the same; but that night when he went to bed he prayed for her, prayed that she, young and fair as she was, might have a happy life, and that no one might shut out joy from her. The following day the father and mother sat talking together when Arne came in; the mother had been shedding tears. Arne asked how things were going; each waited for the other to speak, and therefore it was long before he got a reply; but finally the father said, "It looks pretty bad." Later, Arne heard that Eli had been delirious the whole night; or, as the father said, had been raving. Now she lay violently ill, knew no one, would not take any food, and the parents were just sitting there, deliberating whether they should call in the doctor. When, later, they went up-stairs to the sick girl, and Arne was left alone again, he felt as though life and death were both up there, but he sat outside. In a few days, though, she was better. Once when the father was keeping watch, she took a fancy to have Narrifas, the bird which Mathilde had given her, standing beside the bed. Then Baard told her the truth, that in all this confusion the bird had been forgotten, and that it was dead. The mother came just while Baard was telling this, and she burst out in the door,--"Good gracious me! how heedless you are, Baard, to tell such things to that sick child! See, now she is fainting away again; Heaven forgive you for what you have done!"