Part 37 (2/2)

One evening Peer came home from the post-office apparently in high spirits. ”Hi, Merle, I've got a letter from the Bruseth lady.”

Merle glanced at Lorentz, who had instinctively come close to her, and was looking at his father.

”From Bruseth? How is Louise getting on?” she asked.

”You can see for yourself. Here's the letter,” said he.

Merle read it through hurriedly, and glanced at Lorentz once more.

That evening, after the children had gone to bed, the father and mother sat up talking together in a low voice.

And Merle had to admit that her husband was right. It would be selfish of them to keep the boy here, when he might be heir to Bruseth some day if they let him go.

Suppose he stayed and worked here under his father and learned to be a smith? The blacksmith's day is over--factories do all the work now.

And what schooling could he get away here in the country? Aunt Marit offered to send him to a good school.--And so the die was cast for him too.

But when they went with the boy to see him off at the station, the mother's handkerchief was at her eyes all the time, do what she would.

And when they came home she had to lie down in bed, while Peer went about the place, humming to himself, while he got ready a little supper and brought it to her bedside.

”I can't understand how you can take it so easily,” she burst out.

”No--no,” he laughed a little oddly. ”The less said about that the better, perhaps.”

But the next day it was Peer who said he felt lazy again and would lie still a bit. Merle looked at him and stroked his forehead.

And the time went on. They worked hard and constantly to make both ends meet without help, and they were content to take things as they came.

When the big dairy was started close by, he made a good deal of money setting up the plant, but he was not above sharpening a drill for the road-gangs either. He was often to be seen going down to the country store in a sleeved waistcoat with a knapsack on his back. He carried his head high, the close-trimmed beard was shading over into white, his face often had the strained look that comes from sleeplessness, but his step was light, and he still had a joke for the girls whom he met.

In summer, the neighbours would often see them shutting up the house and starting off up the hill with knapsack and coffee-kettle and with little Asta trotting between them. They were gone, it might be, to try and recapture some memory of old days, with coffee in the open air by a picnic fire.

In the autumn, when the great fields yellowed all the hillsides, Peer and Merle had a little plot of their own that showed golden too. The dimensions of things had shrunk not a little for these two. A bushel of corn was much to them now. It hit them hard if their potato-patch yielded a couple of measures less than they had reckoned on. But the housewives from the farms near by would often look in on Merle to see how bright and clean she kept her little house; and now that she had no one to help her, she found time herself to teach the peasant girls something of cooking and sewing.

But one habit had grown upon her. She would stand long and long by the window looking down the valley to where the hills closed it in. It was as if she were looking constantly for something to come in sight, something that should bring them better days. It was a kind of Sunday for her to stand there and look and wait.

And the time went on.

Chapter VII

DEAR KLAUS BROCK,

I write to tell you of what has lately happened to us here, chiefly in the hope that it may be some comfort to yourself. For I have discovered, dear friend, that this world-sorrow of ours is something a man can get over, if only he will learn to see with his own eyes and not with those of others.

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