| OCR Text |
Show FISHERMAN'S LUCK Now for a long tramp over the hills and home. Yes, home; for yonder in the white house at Drivstuen, with fuchsias and geraniums blooming in the windows, and a pretty, friendly Norse girl to keep her company, my lady is waiting for me. See, she comes running out to the door, in the gathering dusk, with a red flower in her hair, and hails me with the fisherman's greeting. What luck? Well, this luck, at ail events ! I can show you a few good fish, and sit down with you to a supper of reindeer-venison and a quiet evening of music and talk. Shall I forget thee, hospitable Stuefloten, dearest to our memory of ail the rustic stations in Norway? There are no stars beside thy name in tho pages of Baedeker. But in the book of our hearts a whole constellation is thine. The long, low, white farmhouse stands on a green hill at the head of the Romsdal. A flourishing crop of grass and flowers grows on the stable-roof, and there is a little belfry with a big bell to call the labourers home from the fields. In the corner of 194 A NORWEGIAN HONEYMOON the living-room of the old house there is a broad fireplace built across the angle. Curious cupboards arc tucked away everywhere. The long table in the dining-room groans thrice a day with generous fare. There are as many kinds of hot bread as in a Virginia country-house; the cream is thick enough to make a spoon stand up in amazement ; once, at dinner, we sat embarrassed before six different varieties of pudding. In the evening, when the saffron light is beginning to fade, we go out and walk in the road before the house, looking down the long mystical vale of the Rauma, or up to the purple western hills from which the clear streams of the Ulvaa flow to meet us. Above Stuefloten the Rauma lingers and meanders through a smoother and more open valley, with broad beds of gravel and flowery meadows. Here the trout and grayling grow fat and lusty, and here we angle for them, day after day, in water so crystalline that when one steps into the stream one hardly knows whether to expect a depth of six inches or six feet. 195 |
