Ready to start. Fruen comes out; all the family are there to see her off. The priest and his wife both know me again, return my greeting, and say a few words--but I heard nothing said of my taking service with them now. The priest knew me again--yes; and his blue-eyed wife looked at me with that sidelong glance of hers as she knew me again, for all she had known me the night before as well. Frøken Elisabeth brings out some food for the journey, and wraps her friend up well. “Sure you'll be warm enough, now?” she asks for the last time. “Quite sure, thanks; it's more than warm enough with all these. _Farvel, Farvel_.” “See you drive as nicely as you did yesterday,” says Frøken, with a nod to me as well. And we drove off. The day was raw and chilly, and I saw at once that Fruen was not warm enough with her rug. We drive on for hour after hour; the horses know they are on the way home, and trot without asking. My bare hands stiffen about the reins. As we neared a cottage a little way from the road, Fruen knocked on the carriage window to say it was dinner-time. She gets out, and her face was pale with the cold. “We'll go up there and have dinner,” she says. “Come up as soon as you're ready, and bring the basket.” And she walked up the hill. It must be because of the cold she chose to eat in a stranger's house, I thought to myself; she could hardly be afraid of me.... I tied up the horses and gave them their fodder. It looked like rain, so I put the oilskins over them, patted them, and went up to the cottage with the basket. There is only an old woman at home. “Værsaagod!” she says, and “Come in.” And she goes on tending her coffee-pot. Fruen unpacks the basket, and says, without looking at me: “I suppose I am to help you again to-day?” “Thank you, if you will.” We ate in silence, I sitting on a little bench by the door, with my plate on the seat beside me, Fruen at the table, looking out of the window all the time, and hardly eating anything at all. Now and again she exchanges a word with the old woman, or glances at my plate to see if it is empty. The little place is cramped enough, with but two steps from the window to where I sit; so we are all sitting together, after all. When the coffee is ready, I have no room for my cup on the end of the bench, but sit holding it in my hand. Then Fruen turns full-face towards me calmly, and says with down-cast eyes: “There is room here.” I can hear my own heart beating and I murmur something: “Thanks; it's quite all right. I'd rather....” No doubt but that she is uneasy; she is afraid lest I should say something. She sits once more looking away, but I can see she is breathing heavily. Ah, she need have no fear; I would not trouble her with so much as a word.