But however long you looked at Aasa,
you could never be quite sure that she looked at
you; she seemed but to half notice whatever
went on around her; the look of her eye was
always more than half inward, and when it
shone the brightest, it might well happen that
she could not have told you how many years
she had lived, or the name her father gave her
in baptism.
Now Aasa was eighteen years old, and could
knit, weave, and spin, and it was full time that
wooers should come. "But that is the consequence
of living in such an out-of-the-way
place," said her mother; "who will risk his
limbs to climb that neck-breaking rock? and the
round-about way over the forest is rather too
long for a wooer." Besides handling the loom
and the spinning-wheel, Aasa had also learned
to churn and make cheese to perfection, and
whenever Elsie grieved at her strange behavior
she always in the end consoled herself with the
reflection that after all Aasa would make the
man who should get her an excellent housewife.
The farm of Kvaerk was indeed most singularly
situated. About a hundred feet from the
house the rough wall of the mountain rose steep
and threatening; and the most remarkable part
of it was that the rock itself caved inward and
formed a lofty arch overhead, which looked like
a huge door leading into the mountain. Some
short distance below, the slope of the fields
ended in an abrupt precipice; far underneath
lay the other farm-houses of the valley, scattered
like small red or gray dots, and the river wound
onward like a white silver stripe in the shelter
of the dusky forest.
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