He felt so comfortable, the captain said, when he saw Thinka sitting there with her knitting-work and a novel, either out on the stairs or in the sitting-room.
"She is satisfied with her lot now, isn't she?" he said to Ma.
He came back to it so often; it was as if he had a secret disquietude on that point. By getting an insight into the matter through Inger-Johanna, he had to a degree got his eyes opened, at least to the extent of a suspicion, as to the possibility that a woman could be unhappy in a good match.
Then, on the other hand, his constant consolation was that such as Inger-Johanna must be exceptional examples of humanity—with her commanding nature and intolerance of living under any one's thumb.
But ordinary girls were not endowed with such lofty feelings and thoughts—and Thinka was, as it were, made for giving way and submitting to some one.
All the same, the question still lay and writhed like a worm in his stomach.
"Inger-Johanna!" said Thinka out on the stairs, "notice father, how unnerved he looks now, he is walking down there by the garden fence—and he is all the time forgetting his pipe; it is not halfsmoked up before it goes out."
"So you think he is changed," said Inger-Johanna, musing and resuming the conversation, up in their room in the evening. "Poor father; it is so absolutely impossible for him to get over it; I was destined to be a parade horse. But do you believe he would now demand it again of any of us?"
"You are strong, Inger-Johanna, and I suppose you are right. But he has become so good," Thinka said, sighing; "and it is that which makes me uneasy."