Aye, this was a winter.
Old Raastad's two daughters were in the dairy making whey-cheese. The
door was flung open, there was a rush of frosty air, and Peer stood
there blinking his eyes.
"Huh! what smokers you two are!"
"Are we now?" And the red-haired one and the fair-haired one both
giggled, and they looked at each other and nodded. This queer
townsman-lodger of theirs never came near them that he didn't crack
jokes.
"By the way, Else, I dreamed last night that we were going to be
married."
Both the girls shrieked with delight at this.
"And Mari, you were married to the bailiff."
"Oh my! That old creature down at Moen?"
"He was much older. Ninety years old he was."
"Uf!--you're always at your nonsense," said the red-haired girl,
stirring away at her huge, steaming cauldron.
Peer went out again. The girls were hardly out of their teens, and yet
their faces seemed set already and stiff with earnestness. And whenever
Peer had managed to set them laughing unawares, they seemed frightened
the next minute at having been betrayed into doing something there was
no profit in.
Peer strode about in the crackling snow with his fur cap drawn down over
his ears. Jotunheim itself lay there up north, breathing an icy-blue
cold out over the world.
And he? Was he to go on like this, growing hunchbacked under a burden
that weighed and bowed him down continually? Why the devil could he not
shake it off, break away from it, and kick out bravely at his evil fate?
"Peer," asked Merle, standing in the kitchen, "what did you think of
giving the children for a Christmas present?"
"Oh, a palace each, and a horse to ride, of course.
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