Every day, every day I met her. I will tell the truth: I was glad to meet her; aye, my heart flew. It is two years ago this year; now, I think of it only when I please, the whole story just amuses and distracts me. And as for the two green feathers, I will tell about them in good time.

There were several places where we could meet — at the mill, on the road, even in my hut. She came wherever I would. “Goddag!” she cried, always first, and I answered “Goddag!”

“You are happy to-day,” she says, and her eyes sparkle.

“Yes, I am happy,” I answer. “There is a speck there on your shoulder; it is dust, perhaps, a speck of mud from the road; I must kiss that little spot. No — let me — I will. Everything about you stirs me so! I am half out of my senses. I did not sleep last night.”

And that was true. Many a night I lay and could not sleep.

We walk side by side along the road.

“What do you think — am I as you like me to be?” she asks. “Perhaps I talk too much. No? Oh, but you must say what you really think. Sometimes I think to myself this can never come to any good . . . ”

“What can never come to any good?” I ask.

“This between us. That it cannot come to any good. You may believe it or not, but I am shivering now with cold; I feel icy cold the moment I come to you. Just out of happiness.”

“It is the same with me,” I answer. “I feel a shiver, too, when I see you. But it will come to some good all the same. And, anyhow, let me pat you on the back, to warm you.”

And she lets me, half unwillingly, and then I hit a little harder, for a jest, and laugh, and ask if that doesn’t make her feel better.

“Oh, please, don’t when I ask you; please,” says she.

Those few words! There was something so helpless about her saying it so, the wrong way round: “Please don’t when I ask you.” . . .

Then we went on along the road again. Was she displeased with me for my jest, I wondered? And thought to myself............