The captain caught up his field-glasses, rushed out on the steps and in again, called to Ma—and afterwards patiently took his post at the open window, while he called Ma in again every time they came into the turns.
Down there it did not go so quickly. Svarten stopped of his own accord at every man he met on the way; and then Great-Ola must explain.
A young lady with a duster tightly fastened about her waist, parasol and gloves, and such a fine brass-bound English trunk on the back of the cariole, was in itself no common thing. But that it was the daughter of the captain at Gilje who was coming home raised the affair up to the sensational, and the news was therefore well spread over the region when, toward evening, the cariole had got as far as the door at home.
There stood mother and father and Jörgen and Thea and the sub-officer, Tronberg, with his small bag yonder at the corner of the house, and the farm-hands and girls inside the passageway—and Great-Ola was cheated out of lifting the young lady down on the steps, for she herself jumped from the cariole step straight into the arms of her father, and then kissed her mother and hugged Thea and pulled Jörgen by the hair a little forced dance around on the stairs, so that he should feel the first impression of her return home.
Yes, it was the parasol she had lost on the steps and which a bare-footed girl came up with; Ma had a careful eye upon it—the costly, delicate, fringed parasol with long ivory handle had been lying there between the steps and the cariole wheel.
The captain took off her duster himself—The hair, the dress, the gloves; that was the way she looked, a fine grown lady from head to foot.
And so they had the Gilje sun in the room!
"I have been sitting and longing all day for the smell of the petum and to see a little cloud of smoke about your head, father—I think you are a little stouter—and then your dress-coat—I always thought of you in the old shiny one. And mother—and mother!" She rushed out after her into the pantry, where she stayed a long time.
Then she came out more quietly.
A hot fire was blazing in the kitchen. There stood Marit, a short, red-cheeked mountain girl, with white teeth and small hands, stirring the porridge so that the sweat dropped from her face; she knew very well that Great-Ola would have it so that fifteen men could dance on the surface, and now she got the help of the young lady. After that Inger-Johanna must over and spin on Torbjörg's spinning-wheel.