“I too will go up,” he said. “Bed is the best place, eh, Swanhild? God bless you, little one; good-night. What, are you going to be my walking-stick?”
And thus, steadying himself by the child, he went up to his room.
At breakfast the next morning he was in his place as usual, but he seemed very poorly, and afterward made no suggestion as to going down to the office, but lay on the sofa in his study, drowsily watching the flames in his favorite English fireplace. Sigrid went about the house busy with her usual duties, and for the time so much absorbed that she almost forgot the great trouble hanging over them. About eleven o’clock there was a ring at the door-bell; the servant brought in a telegram for Herr Falck. A sort of wild hope seized her that it might be from Frithiof. If anything could cheer her father on that day it would be to hear that all was happily settled, and, taking it from the maid, she bore it herself into her father’s room. He rose from the sofa as she entered.
“I am better, Sigrid,” he said. “I think I could go to the office. Ah! a telegram for me?”
“It has come this minute,” she said, watching him as he sat down before his desk, adjusted his spectacles, and tore open the envelope. If only Frithiof could send news that would cheer him! If only some little ray of brightness would come to lighten that dark day! She had so persuaded herself that the message must be from Frithiof that the thought of the business anxieties had become for the time quite subservient. The telegram was a long one.
“How extravagant that boy is!” she thought to herself. “Why, it would have been enough if he had just put ‘All right.’”
Then a sudden cry broke from her, for her father had bowed his head on his desk like a man who is overwhelmed.
“Father, father!” she cried, “oh! what is the matter?”
For a minute or two neither spoke nor moved. At last, with an effort, he raised himself. He looked up at her with a face of fixed despair, with eyes whose anguish wrung her heart.
“Sigrid,” he said, in a voice unlike his own, “they have taken the agency from me. I am bankrupt!”