She kept a school for the children of the region, and read with those of the captain, the newly settled doctor, and the bailiff.
And now she had many boys to care for, whom she had got places in the country round about, while in the course of years she had striven to put several young geniuses from the neighborhood in the way of getting on down in the cities.
She was imperious, and gave occasion for people's talk by her unusually independent conduct; but to her face she met pure respect. She was still, at her fortieth year, delicate and slender, with undiminished, even if more quiet, fire in her eyes, and hair black as a raven.
She sought for talents in the children like four-leaved clover on the hills, as she was said to have expressed it; and when Grip, down at Thinka's, talked of Jörgen's happy escape from his surroundings as one of the few green leaves in his life, he then suppressed the most secret thought he cherished, that her little school was an offshoot propagated by his ideas.
In the twilight the next afternoon a form stole up to the fence around her schoolroom—the longing to catch, if possible, a glimpse of her drove him nearer and nearer.
Now he was standing close to the window.
An obscure form now and then moved before it.
An uncertain gleam was playing about in there from the mouth of the stove. The lamp was not yet lighted, and he heard the voice of a boy reciting something which he had learned by heart, but did not know well; it sounded like verse—it must be the children from the captain's house.
The entry door was open, and a little later he was standing in it, listening breathlessly.