"Do you want to know? He thought you had too much backbone."
"What—did he say?"
She wrinkled her eyebrows and looked up sharply, so that Thinka hastened to add: "Whoever comes there must be able to wind like a sewing thread around the governor's wife, he said; it would be a shame for your beautiful neck to get a twist so early."
Inger-Johanna threw her head back and smiled: "Did you ever hear such a man!"
* * * * *
Thinka had gone to Ryfylke. Her place at the table, in the living-room, in the bed-chamber, was empty air. The captain started out time after time to call her.
And now the last afternoon had come, when Inger-Johanna was also going away.
The sealskin trunk with new iron bands stood open in the hall ready for packing. The cariole was standing in the shed, greased so that the oil was running out of the ends of the axles, and Great-Ola, who was to start the next morning on the three days' journey, was giving Svarten oats.
The captain had been terribly busy that day: no one understood how to pack as he did.
Ma handed over to him one piece of the new precious stuff after the other; the linen from Gilje would bear the eye of the governor's wife.