"Take care!"

The cry is heard simultaneously with the banging open of the double doors; and still hooting imprecations, the nursemaid follows hard on the heels of two blue-smocked small boys who come pounding into the room with a cat madly struggling in the arms of one.

"Oh, poor Olaf," their mother calls imploringly from over her needlework, "oh, do put him down."

But Olaf is already leaping wildly free with ears laid back, and now he shoots across the Turkish rug to crouch, striped fur on end, beside a potted palm: a small, ratty-looking stray whose scarred body and notched, unsymmetrical ears -- one is permanently twisted -- bear witness to his early wanderings. He is still given to wandering, and disappears for days into the woods that spread away from the house; but he always comes back to the creature over there, she who coaxed him in from the snow one freezing dusk long before.

His alert, pale green eyes followed the boys, whom he saw as two frantic beasts, as they ran first to their mother's chair for their goodnight embrace and then to their father's and then dashed back out, almost colliding with the maid and her tray. "Take care!" cried the nurse again, pursuing them on down the hallway as the maid in her white lace apron and beribboned cap came into the room.

It was a spacious, richly upholstered drawing room with tall windows overlooking the Oresund, the sound that lies between Denmark and Sweden. A great floor-to-ceiling ceramic stove, with flowers and winged animals painted on its sea-green tiles, radiated a broad and cozy warmth. The walls were covered with paintings in carved gilt and ebony frames -- seascapes, landscapes, ancestral portraits of bishops and army officers. Fresh flowers stood everywhere.

The maid, very young though heavy-featured and square of shape, took in her surroundings with a pleased and cavalier air. She carried a Florentine tray on which stood a carafe and two small glasses, for the master and mistress liked their sip of apricot liqueur of a quiet evening, and they liked it served on this tray from their Italian wedding trip. That was before her time, she'd been with them only a few weeks, but she knew everything about the trip because she'd asked. Why not?First by carriage down the coast to Copenhagen, then by steamer down to Germany, then by train down the rest of the fantastic long way, and she herself had never even been to Sweden -- not that there was much there but poor people emigrating to America -- but so near that as she passed the windows she could see the glow of coastal lights across the water.

She glanced from the tall windows to the tall potted palms. She had never imagined, coming from a cramped little row cottage, that there could be such a thing as trees inside a dwelling. They had made her nervous at first, but now she felt entirely at ease with them, as with everything else in the house. She even made improvements in her mind. For instance, she'd sweep out the cat. Peasants kept cats, not people of standing. And not even a peasant would keep a wretched eyesore like Olaf.

But she didn't hold this against her employers, for you couldn't find a more generous, easygoing young couple, especially the mistress. And both of them a great pleasure to look at, for the maid very much liked comely, glossy-haired, well-dressed people. These two had more than their fair share of good looks -- as they had more than their fair share of everything -- and even resembled each other a bit, being cousins, if only distant, having in common a great-great-great-grandsomething-or-other back in the mists of time. She knew this because she'd asked. She'd asked about the bishops and soldiers on the wall. Why shouldn't she? Why should she hang back?

Having set the tray down by Hr. Rosted, she turned to Fru Rosted with enlarged and tragic eyes.

"I know it's fearful late to ask -- but could Fruen please give me tomorrow off 'stead of Thursday? I'd never ask -- not on my mother's grave I wouldn't -- only tomorrow's the last day of the Horsholm fair, the very last day! Oh, if Fruen only knew how much I been wanting and wanting --"

"But go then," Fru Rosted's mild voice broke in. "Go to your fair by all means. Peace be on your agitated soul."

At which the girl bobbed brightly and left the room.

"I know," she said to her husband as she drew a wool thread through the material on her lap. She was making a small needlepoint rug; a design of pale and dark yellow roses was woven against an almost finished background of russet.

"Too soft, Grethe," he said, lowering his book with a good-natured head shake. Hr. Rosted was a very tall, strapping young man not quite thirty, clean-shaven, with a mass of bronze hair, and dark strong brows over eyes of deep warmth. "Every maid in the universe is given a half-day off. But not ours. No, they must all have a full day. Well, that's fine, that's as it should be. But this one -- this one has already grown so bold as to choose whichever day suits her. Too soft, my love. And here comes another petitioner."

Finally seeing his way clear, Olaf was swiftly loping to his creature's side. It was a standing joke between Hr. Rosted and his wife that she was more concerned with the cat's welfare than the children's.

"But a cat isn't like a person," she said, leaning from her chair and stroking the animal by its twisted ear. "A cat is all alone, Holger. A cat cannot express itself in words. Olaf cannot say what he feels inside him."

"My dear Grethe, the only feeling inside Olaf is the wish for a big juicy herring." And he gave a mock duck of his shoulders as she, with smiling aim, threw a tangle of thread at him, their eyes meeting in a look of shared and familiar humor, and of deepest, most intimate love. His eyes lingered on her as she took up her needle and thread again, the unsightly animal nestling in the folds of the gown around her feet. The lamplight fell on her honey-colored hair, parted in the center with small locks along the brow, above them a smooth broad plait like a crown. On her lowered cheek he knew just where the captivating dimple appeared when she laughed. He knew the exact shade of her so much more than pretty, so much more than captivating gray eyes, candid, witty, tender. If he were a poet, like Bodtcher, whose open book he held in his lap, he would write one of the world's great love songs.

Olaf slept in the warm folds. Suddenly he woke as the huger of the two creatures came looming over him in what he experienced as a towering confusion of movement and noise, and which sent him speeding back to the potted palm.

Hr. Rosted, carrying the two small glasses, seated himself on the brocade arm of his wife's chair. They sipped, they talked, and from time to time their faces came together in a protracted kiss. They were a couple who on their walks always held hands, no common sight in the 1880s, who at the dinner table would each move a foot to seek and caress the other's, whose bed in the morning was a wildly tumbled map of ardor. Thus it was a good while Olaf waited before Hr. Rosted returned to his chair and Fru Rosted to her sewing. Then the cat ventured back and settled in once more.