“She doesn’t know,” thought Norby, with a feeling of relief.
“Ye—es,” he growled in an uncertain tone of voice, his eyes dropping once more. He was not equal to either the sacrament matter or Wangen this evening.
Hearing at that moment a well-known laugh in the adjoining room, he took the opportunity of slipping out.
When he entered the next room, his daughter-in-law was sitting by a steaming bath in the middle of the floor, occupied in undressing her two-year-old son, preparatory to giving him his bath.
The old man paused at the door, and his tired face suddenly lit up.
“Who is that?” asked the fair-haired young mother, looking at the child. The boy looked at his grandfather with large, round eyes, and laughed a little shyly; but no sooner was his vest drawn over his head than he wriggled down to the floor to run to Norby. On gaining his liberty, however, he discovered the fact that he was naked, and this was even more interesting than his grandfather. He began to run backwards and forwards upon the floor, slapping his little body and laughing. Then he caught sight of his small breasts, and touched them with his fore-finger, then evaded once more the grasp of his mother, who tried to catch him, and laughed in triumph as he escaped. The old man was obliged to sit down and laugh too.
“Well, I shall go and get something good from grandfather!” said his mother; and in a twinkling the boy had climbed upon the old man’s knee, and began an investigation of all his pockets, until a packet of sweets was brought to light.
The boy’s name was Knut, of course. His father, Norby’s eldest son, had been thrown from his sledge and killed when driving home from Lillehammer fair before the boy was born; and ever since the old man had had a horror of strong drink.
A secret worry very quickly assumes the dimensions of an actual misfortune. Just because the old man was tired and wanted to be left in peace, he felt the explanation he must have with his wife to be doubly painful. With his grandchild he always became a child himself; but this evening he could see nothing but Wangen all the time, and this irritated him. While he sat and smiled at the boy, he suddenly glanced aside, as much as to say: “Cannot you leave me in peace even here?” Wangen penetrated, as it were, into the old man’s holy of holies, and Norby wanted to turn him out. He began to look upon Wangen as his enemy because he had brought dissension into his house, and because Norby had been guilty of a little deception towards his wife, which would now have to be unveiled.