“But you might come up to us for your meals,” she said. “There was an Englishman here last year--he had taken the hut--and he often came to us for meals.” Edwarda looked at me and I at her. I felt at the moment something touching my heart like a little fleeting welcome. It must have been the spring, and the bright day; I have thought it over since. Also, I admired the curve of her eyebrows. She said something about my place; how I had arranged things in the hut. I had hung up skins of several sorts on the walls, and birds' wings; it looked like a shaggy den on the inside. She liked it. “Yes, a den,” she said. I had nothing to offer my visitors that they would care about; I thought of it, and would have roasted a bird for them, just for amusement--let them eat it hunter's fashion, with their fingers. It might amuse them. And I cooked the bird. Edwarda told about the Englishman. An old man, an eccentric, who talked aloud to himself. He was a Roman Catholic, and always carried a little prayer-book, with red and black letters, about with him wherever he went. “Was he an Irishman then?” asked the Doctor. “An Irishman...?” “Yes--since he was a Roman Catholic.” Edwarda blushed, and stammered and looked away. “Well, yes, perhaps he was an Irishman.” After that she lost her liveliness. I felt sorry for her, and tried to put matters straight again. I said: “No, of course you are right: he was an Englishman. Irishmen don't go travelling about in Norway.” We agreed to row over one day and see the fish-drying grounds... When I had seen my visitors a few steps on their way, I walked home again and sat down to work at my fishing gear. My hand-net had been hung from a nail by the door, and several of the meshes were damaged by rust; I sharpened up some hooks, knotted them to lengths of line, and looked to the other nets. How hard it seemed to do any work at all to-day! Thoughts that had nothing to do with the business in hand kept coming and going; it occurred to me that I had done wrong in letting Edwarda sit on the bed all the time, instead of offering her a seat on the bench. I saw before me suddenly her brown face and neck; she had fastened her apron a little low down in front, to be long-waisted, as was the fashion; the girlish contour of her thumb affected me tenderly, and the little wrinkles above the knuckle were full of kindliness. Her mouth was large and rich.