“Mean you because I am parted from all that now?” She laughed quietly, and said: “I have had my happy time, Kristin, and I am not so foolish as to murmur, if now, since I have drunk up my wine and beer, I have to put up with skimmed milk and sour. Good days may last long if one lives wisely and deals warily with what one has; all wise folk know that, and ’tis therefore, I trow, that wise folk must rest content with good days—for the best days of all cost very dear. In this world they call him a fool who wastes his heritage that he may make merry in the days of his youth. As to that each man may deem as he lists. But that man only do I call a fool and a very dolt who rues his bargain after it is made; and twice a simpleton and a fool of fools is he who thinks to see more of his boon-companions after his heritage is gone—” “—Is there aught amiss with Ulvhild?” she called gently across to Ragnfrid, who had made a sharp movement where she sat by the child’s bed. “Nay, she sleeps well,” said the child’s mother and came over to Lady Aashild and Kristin at the hearth. Her hands on the pole of the smoke-vent, she stood and looked down into Lady Aashild’s face. “Kristin doth not understand such things,” she said. “No,” answered the Lady. “But she learned her prayers, too, I doubt not, before she understood them. The times when we need prayers or counsel, we are little like to be in a mood to learn, nor yet to understand.” Ragnfrid drew her dark eyebrows together thoughtfully. At such times her bright, deep-set eyes looked like barns below a dark-wooded hillside, so Kristin had often thought when she was little—or so she had heard others say. Lady Aashild looked at Ragnfrid with her little half-smile, and the mother seated herself upon the edge of the hearth, and taking a twig, stuck it into the embers. “But he who has wasted his heritage upon the sorriest goods—and thereafter beholds a treasure he would gladly give his life to own—think you not he must rue bitterly his own folly?” “No doing without some rueing, Ragnfrid,” said Lady Aashild. “And he who is willing to give his life, should make the venture and see what he can win—” Ragnfrid plucked the burning twig from the fire, blew out the flame and bent her hand about the glowing end, so that it shone out blood-red from between her fingers. “Oh! these are words, words, and only words, Lady Aashild.” “Well,” said the other, “truly, Ragnfrid, there is not much that’s worth buying so dear as with one’s life.” “Nay, but there is,” said Ragnfrid passionately, and she whispered so it could scarce be heard: “My husband.”