Einar turned his face to her and smiled suddenly like a naughty boy. Was his father really thinking about him and doing something for him too?
“Father hasn’t come to see me,” he said after a little, sadly.
Ingeborg sighed and gazed at the candle.
“He asks after you a hundred times a day,” she said; “and when you were worst, he neither slept nor ate.”
A little later she looked at Einar’s pale face among the pillows; and though his eyes were closed, the tears were forcing their way from under their lids, and his lips were compressed. She rose, and wiped the tears away with her pocket-handkerchief, saying: “I think it’s to spare you that father doesn’t come. And besides, you can hardly expect him to come as long as he doesn’t know what you think of him.”
Einar’s lips were more tightly compressed, as if something hurt him.
“Shall I ask father to come, Einar?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
Norby had said to his wife that there had been a disagreement between himself and Einar, and that he would not go in to see him until the boy was well enough to talk about the matter.
He had gradually become quite sure that his enemies had incited the boy against him; but who could have been knowing enough for that? Einar! Yes, it was well done.