“That’s nothing, my dear boy. How are you now? Is there anything you’ve a fancy for?”
He felt these few affectionate words quite overwhelming, because they dispelled all fears, and for a time gave him perfect contentment and rest.
Ingeborg came up one day with some budding birch-twigs which she threw upon his bed. “There’s a harbinger of spring,” she said. “Now you must be quick and come out, and see what I’m doing in the garden.”
When at last he was allowed to sit up, his seat was placed at the window. Girls were running bare-headed across the yard. They were laughing and joking. It made him smile too. He had had a lot of fun down there among the houses as a boy; there was a reminiscence connected with every corner, and these were now awakened, and all his ideas connected themselves more and more with the place and the people who lived in it.
Ingeborg came to him rather timidly one day, and asked him to let her read to him out of a devotional book, and he assented in order to give her a pleasure. Gradually as he listened, however, he began to think it was beautiful. He had been mistaken in this too.
One evening, when the reading was over, she said: “The lake is quite open now; the steamer ran to-day.” And Einar saw the great open lake, its surface of a greenish colour from the melting of the snow. Logs were drifting about here and there, and a bird was sitting upon a solitary piece of ice, and floating along with it, now and again flapping its wings. He saw the steamer with its awning, and ladies on board in light dresses. Heigh-ho! Summer was coming!
“Do you know what father’s doing?” asked Ingeborg with a smile.
“Father?” whispered Einar, turning his head towards the wall.
“Yes. He’s having a little room put up for you at the sæter. The doctor wants you to be on the mountains this summer.”