We must return now for a little to the settlement of the Norsemen, which, by the way, had by this time come to be called by the name of Leifsgaard.

 

Here, from Thorward’s house, there issued tones which indicated the existence of what is popularly known as a “breeze.” Human breezes are usually irregular, and blow after the manner of counter-currents; but in Thorward’s habitation the breezes almost invariably blew in one direction, and always issued from the lungs of Freydissa, who possessed a peculiar knack of keeping and enjoying all the breeze to herself, some passive creature being the butt against which it impinged.

 

On the present occasion that butt was Bertha. Indeed, Bertha was a species of practising-butt, at which Freydissa exercised herself when all other butts failed, or when she had nothing better to do.

 

“Don’t say to me that you can’t help it!” she cried, in her own amiably shrill tones. “You can help it well enough if you choose. You are always at it, morning, noon, and night; I’m quite sick of you, girl; I’m sorry I brought you here; I’d send you back to Greenland to-morrow if I could. If the ship sank with you on the passage, I’d rejoice—I would! There! don’t say it again, now; you’re going to—I can see that by your whimpering look. Don’t say you can’t help it. Don’t! don’t! Do you hear?”

 

“Indeed, indeed I can’t—”

 

“There! I knew you would,” shrieked Freydissa, as she raised herself from the wash-tub in which she had been manipulating some articles of clothing as if she were tearing Bertha to pieces— “why can’t you?”

 

“It isn’t easy to help weeping,” whimpered Bertha, as she continued to drive her spinning-wheel, “when one thinks of all that has passed, and poor—”

 

“Weeping! weeping!” cried Freydissa, diving again into the tub; “do you call that weeping? I call it downright blubbering. Why, your face is as much begrutten as if you were a mere baby.”

 

This was true, for what between her grief at the sudden disappearance of Olaf and Snorro, and the ceaseless assaults of her mistress, who was uncommonly cross that morning, Bertha’s pretty little face was indeed a good deal swelled and inflamed about the eyes and cheeks. She again took refuge in silence, but this made no difference to Freydissa, or rather it acted, if anything, as a provocative of wrath. “Speak, you hussy!” was usually her irate manner of driving the helpless little handmaid out of that refuge.

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