"Study--diligent, earnest and honest," said Uncle Thor, "will win many honors for you when you are older, Valdemar. If you work hard, you should some day gather some of the roses that strew the path of the Danish artist, my boy." "But once you said that Denmark was almost overcrowded with art students, Uncle Thor, didn't you?" "That is true. But many of them fail to go on with their work; they lose courage and drop out. Others become interested in something else, and so leave their art studies. The few who do keep on usually learn all they can from the art schools in Denmark, and then go to Italy for further study." "Yes, as you did, Uncle Thor, and as Thorvaldsen did, too," said Valdemar. "Oh, Uncle Thor! Do you think that, when I am older, I may ever be able to study in Italy?" "My dear little Valdemar, anything is possible for you, if you work hard enough," was the great artist's answer. CHAPTER IX A DANISH PEASANT WEDDING KAREN'S fair skin was tanned so many shades darker than her flaxen locks that Valdemar and Karl hardly knew her. Far down on the delightful _Vesterhavet_,[24] on the sandy little island of Fanö, she had spent the happy summer-time with her mother and Aunt Amalia, first at the seashore, and later on the great farm of Peder Sörensen, near Nordby, where, most of the time, she had played out of doors in the sun and wind. The merry harvest season had passed soon after Valdemar and Karl had arrived. They remembered how the harvesters had laid aside the last sheaf, decorated it with flowers and ribbons, and carried it in procession. Then had followed the great _Höst Gilde_, or Harvest Feast, a very festive function when sturdy men and rosy-cheeked maidens danced hand-in-hand. Then, later, in the same beautiful month of October, had followed another folk-festival, and Mortin's Day,[25] when in the evening everybody ate "Mortin's Goose," stuffed with boiled apples and black fruit. Sometimes, on some of the children's many trips over to play on the beach by the West Sea, they had brought back pieces of amber washed up by the water. Karl found some pretty big pieces to add to his rapidly growing collection of Danish souvenirs, which now included not only the coral specimens, sea-gull's eggs and wing-feathers, but Fanö amber, and, best of all, Uncle Thor's gift of the great white envelope and letter from the Royal Palace. Peder Sörensen was not a farmer himself. Like most of the men of Fanö, he was a sailor. It was the Fanö wives who, in their picturesque though rather unbecoming dress, cultivated the land, drove the cattle to pasture and the sheep to graze among the sand-hills, and it was they who milked the fine "Red Danish" cows at night, and made the far-famed "Best Danish" butter, with which they welcomed home their seafaring husbands.