"Soren Braaten."
And thenceforward his letters and telegrams were invariably signed "Ever your loving."
When Soren came home late that autumn, Cilia thought he might fairly have a year ashore, as they had laid by a good deal, and could afford a rest. Soren grumbled a little, and suggested that it would be desperately dull hanging about on shore all the summer, but Cilia undertook to find him entertainment enough. "We've all that bit of ground down there to plant potatoes, then the house wants painting, and a new garden fence—oh yes, and we ought really to have another well dug round at the back, and——"
Soren had visions of Cilia standing over him and ordering him about at these various tasks, while he toiled in the sweat of his brow. Oh, a nice sort of rest it would be! No, give him his old place on board, where he could do as he pleased.
There was no help for it, however. Abrahamsen, the mate, was put in charge of Birkebeineren that summer, and Soren had to stay at home.
Soren Braaten had never had any social position to speak of in Strandvik, and indeed he had no wish for anything of the sort. His comrades at the Seamen's Union were good enough company for him. It was different with Cilia, however; as their means increased, she began to feel more and more aggrieved at never being asked to parties at Holm Berg's or Prois's, and as for the Magistrate's folk, they never so much as gave her a glance when she passed them in the street. And only the other day she had met that impertinent upstart, Lawyer Nickelsen; if he hadn't dared to address her simply as "Celia!" Oh, but she would show them! And she went over her plan—it was to be carried out this summer, while Soren was at home. Soren was to be renamed, and appear henceforward as Soren Braathen—with an "h," Shipowner. Malvina was to be a lady, and, if possible, married off to some young man of standing. Then, surely, the family would be able to take the rank and position in society to which their comfortable means entitled them.
While Cilia was occupied with these reflections in the kitchen—it was the day Birkebeineren was to sail—Abrahamsen and Malvina were sitting in the summer-house in an attitude eloquent of itself. To be precise, they were holding each other's hands.
"It's none so easy for me, Malvina," the mate was saying, "as a common man, to ask your father and mother straight out—and there's no such desperate hurry as I can see till after this voyage."
With him Malvina agreed, and the loving couple separated, not without mutual assurances of undying faith and affection for better or worse, whatever obstacles might be placed in their way.
Meantime, Soren Braaten had stolen down to the cellar, where he had a carefully hoarded stock of English bottled stout, with which he was wont to refresh himself at odd moments. Seated on a barrel, he was enjoying the blessing of life and liquor in deep draughts, without a care in the world. True, he had seen through the skylight Malvina and the mate in what might be construed as a compromising position, but trusting in this as in all else to Cilia's management, he took it for granted that she was a party to the affair.