“Didn’t I hear you talking at the telephone?” asked the old man, looking over his spectacles.
“Einar’s coming home to-day,” she said. “He has asked to be met at the station with a sledge.”
The old man put his hands behind his back and his legs astride, and looked at her over his spectacles.
“What do you say?” he exclaimed. “Einar coming home now? He must have plenty of time, that gentleman. He must be thinking of becoming a perpetual student!”
“You are so hot-tempered,” said Marit. “You’re generally glad to have the boy come home.”
He did not answer, but again began to rummage among his papers. Was the boy going to interfere in earnest in this affair? He felt as if an enemy had suddenly stabbed him in the back. Einar? He’d better try, that’s all.
“If only he doesn’t first go and talk to his mother about it,” thought the old man. “But that wouldn’t be like him.”
He hung about, however, on the watch to be the first to meet his son at the house.
When Einar alighted at the station, he found Ingeborg waiting with horse and sledge.