Kurt very soon began to visit her home; he knew the hours when she would be free, and speedily learnt her times for walking, following her about everywhere. She tried as much as possible not to be alone with him; otherwise she was pleased enough that he should come. He told her and her friends amusing stories, and touching ones sometimes. Such, for instance, was the history of a deserted brood of ptarmigan, which he had once picked up, one by one, out of the heather, where they were running about, all downy and unfledged; he had brought them all home, he said, in his cap. This story seemed to bring with it such a fresh breath of mountain air, full of the scent of the heather, and he related it with such genuine feeling, that it brought the tears into their eyes. Such things as these seemed to inspire him; even in the midst of the wildest stories, he would often throw in some delicate, telling touch. The way in which he invariably spoke of his father attracted the girl to him. There was a mixture of drollness and tenderness in it, midway between laughter and tears. They got used to his rough descriptions, his coarse language; it could not well have been dispensed with; it gave a special colouring which charmed, while it startled them. Tomasine and her friends did not try to have it otherwise, so that at last there was no one who appeared to them to be able to relate stories except himself. Tomasine more than any one else. She felt that it was all done for her amusement. One day, when by chance they were alone, he began to tell her about the widow of a pilot, for whom he was just then most assiduously making a collection. He saw that she liked him for doing so, and, without further preface, he declared that Fröken Tomasine Holm Rendalen was to him what a town was to a desert caravan; nay, if she laughed, it was because she did not know what it was to trudge along through endless sand, under a burning sun, exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. "It is something to see a town then, I can tell you." Well, _she_ was the minaret tower, the plane-trees, and the springs of water, the wine which awaited them, and white tents, and dancing, the sound of the guitars, and the smell of roasting meat. Suppose they two were to make a match of it! If that could be, he would sell the whole garden, and they would wander away to all the most delightful places on the face of the earth. They would lie on their backs under the awnings, while their servants came and put food and drink into their mouths. Or why not stay here and carry "The Estate" gardens right up on to the mountains? What would not grow with such shelter, on such sunny hillsides, fanned by such warm sea breezes. There they would dig away into the hillside, like a couple of badgers, and become rich people. But he saw what a fright he had put her into; so, without any pause, he turned the conversation into a wild panegyric on his father. The fact was that the whole thing was his father's invention.