“Pay you a visit?”
“Yes, pay me a visit; spend several weeks at my house in company with your mother, of course.”
“And if we should leave the inn who will attend to things in our absence?” replied Joel.
“But your presence here is not necessary after the excursion season is over, I imagine; so I have fully made up my mind to come for you late in the autumn.”
“It will be impossible, my dear Mister Sylvius, for us to accept—”
“On the contrary, it will be perfectly possible. Don’t say no. I shall not be content with such an answer. Besides, when I get you there in the very best room in my house, in the care of my old Kate and faithful Fink, you will be my own children, and then you can certainly tell me what I can do for you.”
“What you can do for us?” repeated Joel, with a glance at his sister.
“Brother!” exclaimed Hulda, as if divining his intention.
“Speak, my boy, speak!”
“Ah, well, Mister Sylvius, you can do us a great honor.”
“How?”
“By consenting to be present at my sister Hulda’s marriage, if it would not inconvenience you too much.”
“Hulda’s marriage!” exclaimed Sylvius Hogg. “What! my little Hulda is going to be married, and no one has said a word to me about it!”
“Oh, Mister Sylvius!” exclaimed the girl, her eyes filling with tears.
“And when is the marriage to take place?”
“As soon as it pleases God to bring her betrothed, Ole Kamp, back to us,” replied the girl.
XI
Joel then proceeded to relate Ole Kamp’s whole history. Sylvius Hogg, deeply moved, listened to the recital with profound attention. He knew all now. He even read Ole’s letter announcing his speedy return. But Ole had not returned, and there had been no tidings from the missing one. What anxiety and anguish the whole Hansen family must have suffered!
“And I thought myself an inmate of a happy home!” he said to himself.
Still, after a little reflection, it seemed to him that the brother and sister were yielding to despair while there was still some room for hope. By counting these May and June days over and over again their imaginations had doubled the number, as it were.
The professor, therefore, concluded to give them his reasons for this belief, not feigned, but really sensible and plausible reasons that would also account for the delay of the Viking.
Nevertheless his face had become very grave, for the poor girl’s evident grief touched him deeply.
“Listen to me, my children,” said he. “Sit down here by me, and let us talk the matter over calmly.”
“Ah! what can you say to comfort us?” cried Hulda, whose heart was full to overflowing.
“I shall tell you only what I really and truly think,” replied the professor. “I have been thinking over all that Joel just told me, and it seems to me that you are more anxious and despondent than you have any real cause to be. I would not arouse any false hopes, but we must view matters as they really are.”
“Alas! Mister Sylvius,” replied Hulda, “my poor Ole has gone down with the Viking, and I shall never see him again!”
“Sister, sister!” exclaimed Joel, “be calm, I beseech you, and hear what Mister Sylvius has to say.”
“Yes, be calm, my children, and let us talk the matter over quietly. It was between the fifteenth and twentieth of May that Ole expected to return to Bergen, was it not?”
“Yes; and it is now the ninth of June.”
“So the vessel is only twenty days overdue, if we reckon from the latest date appointed for the return of the Viking. That is enough to excite anxiety, I admit; still, we must not expect the same punctuality from a sailing-vessel as from a steamer.”
“I have told Hulda that again and again, and I tell her so yet,” interrupted Joel.
“And you are quite right, my boy. Besides, it is very possible that the Viking is an old vessel, and a slow sailer, like most Newfoundland ships, especially when heavily laden. On the other hand, we have had a great deal of bad weather during the past few weeks, and very possibly the vessel did not sail at the date indicated in Ole’s letter. In that case a week’s delay in sailing would be sufficient to account for the non-arrival of the Viking and for your failure to receive a letter from your lover. What I say is the result of serious reflection. Besides, how do you know but the instructions given to the captain of the Viking authorize him to take his cargo to some other port, according to the state of the market?”
“In that case, Ole would have written,” replied Hulda, who could not even be cheered by this hope.
“What is there to prove that he did not write?” retorted the professor. “If he did, it is not the Viking that is behind time, but the American mail. Suppose, for instance, that Ole’s ship touched at some port in the United States, that would explain why none of his letters have yet reached Europe.”
“The United States, Mister Sylvius!”
“That sometimes happens, and it is only necessary to miss one mail to leave one’s friends without news for a long time. There is, at all events, one very easy thing for us to do; that is to make inquiries of some of the Bergen shipowners. Are you acquainted with any of them?”
“Yes,” replied Joel, “Messrs. Help Bros.”
“Help Bros., the sons of old Help?”
“Yes.”
“Why, I know them, too; at least, the younger brother, Help, Junior, they call him, though he is not far from my own age, and one of my particular friends. He has often dined with me in Christiania. Ah, well, my children, I can soon learn through him all that can be ascertained about the Viking. I’ll write him this very day, and if need be I’ll go and see him.”
“How kind you
