His manly bearing, however, and the friendship of several of the
professors saved him from the _consilium abeundi cum infamia_, with
which he was threatened. Instead of that he was appointed _docent_ in
aesthetics, Secretary to the Faculty of Philosophy, and Assistant
University Librarian. His summer vacations he spent at Raemen with the
Myhrmans. His playmate, Miss Anna, was now sixteen years of age, and had
undergone that miraculous transformation, which never loses its
delightful mystery, from childhood into young womanhood. He went away
one day and bade good-by to an awkward kangaroo-like girl in short
skirts, and returned in a few months to greet a lovely, blushingly
dignified young lady, who probably avowed no more her fondness for him
with the same frank heedlessness as of old. But she would have been more
than woman if she could have resisted the wooing of the beautiful youth
upon whom nature had showered so many rare gifts. A stone has been found
up in the woods above Raemen which yet shows under its coating of moss
the initials of E.
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