A new thought had simultaneously come to us both--that now we were engaged.

Susanna was the first to give it expression, and said, as she looked at me out of the depths of her faithful blue eyes, that from this time I must always remember that she was fond of me, however unkind the others were.
We heard them calling us, and--what we had never thought of doing before--Susanna hurried on by herself a little way, so that we each came back to the others alone.
* * * * * It was far on into the morning of the next day, when Anne Kvaen roused me with a shake, as she had been accustomed to do since I was a child, and told me that my father had started that morning for Tromsoe.

He had been up to my room before he went, and when he came down again said that I lay smiling in my sleep, and "looked so happy, poor boy"! It was very seldom that any sympathetic words came from my father, so these are imprinted on my memory.
My father himself at that time was anything but cheerful.

The steamboat dispute lay heavy on his heart, and he now wanted to try, as a last resort, to have the matter thoroughly aired in the newspapers, and it was about this that he now wanted to apply personally to a solicitor at Tromsoe.
These circumstances, however, did not come to my knowledge at that time..