ÅSE
And your neck you haven’t broken?
Haven’t broken both your thighs?
and your backbone, too, is whole?
Oh, dear Lord — what thanks, what praise,
should be thine who helped my boy!
There’s a rent, though, in your breeches;
but it’s scarce worth talking of
when one thinks what dreadful things
might have come of such a leap —!
[Stops suddenly, looks at him open-mouthed and wide-eyed; cannot find words for some time, but at last bursts out:]
Oh, you devil’s story-teller,
Cross of Christ, how you can lie!
All this screed you foist upon me,
I remember now, I knew it
when I was a girl of twenty.
Gudbrand Glesne it befell,
never you, you —