be engaged lovers, Petra? I should really like to know that. To chase each other up the hills does not amount to anything.”
“No, that is very true.” She laughed and stood still. “But now listen, Gunnar! while we stand here and take breath.—Ugh!—I am going to tell you how engaged lovers act. As long as you are in town, you must wait outside the sewing-school, and go home with me all the way to the door, each evening, and if I am out anywhere else you must wait in the street until I come. When you go away, though, you must write to me, and buy things to send tome. Ah, that is true: we must have a couple of rings with your name in one and mine in the other, and then the year and the day of the month; but as I have no money you must buy them both.”
“That I will with pleasure, but”—
“What are you after with your but again?”
“Good gracious! I only meant that I must have the measure of your finger.”
“Well, that you can have at once.” She pulled up a blade of grass and bit it off the right size after she had measured her finger. “There, do not throw it away!”
He wrapped it in a piece of paper, and put the paper in his pocket-book; she watched him until the pocket-book was entirely out of sight.
