Peer took her arm and led her over to a window looking out on the lake. “There, dearest! Isn’t it lovely here?”
“Peer, you’ve asked me that twenty times a day ever since we came.”
“Yes, and you never answer. And you’ve never once yet run and thrown your arms round my neck and said how happy you were. And it’s never yet come to pass that you’ve given me a single kiss of your own accord.”
“I should think not, when you steal such a lot.” And she pushed him aside, and slipped under his arm, and ran out of the room. “I must go in and see mother again to-day,” she said as she went.
“Huit! Of course!” He paced up and down the room, his step growing more and more impatient. “In to mother—in to mother! Always and everlastingly mother and mother and nothing else. Huit!” and he began to whistle.
Merle put her head in at the door. “Peer—have you such a terrible lot of spare time?”
“Well, yes and no. I’m busy enough looking about in every corner here for something or another. But I can’t find it, and I don’t even know exactly what it is. Oh well, yes—I have plenty of time to spare.”
“But what about the farm?”
“Well, there’s the dairy-woman in the cow-house, and the groom in the stables, and the bailiff to worry the tenants and workpeople. What am I to do—poke around making improvements?”
“But what about the machine-shop?”