She quickly threw it out of the window, and with a towel carefully wiped those that had fallen on the field of battle off the sill.
Later in the forenoon, Ma and Inger-Johanna stood down in the garden, picking sugar peas for dinner.
"Only the ripest, Inger-Johanna, which are becoming too hard and woody, till your father comes home. What will your aunt say when she hears that we have let you go with your father so far up in the wilderness—she certainly will not think such a trip very inviting, or comprehend that you can be so eloquent over stone and rocks."
"No, she thinks that nothing can compete with their Tulleröd," said Inger-Johanna, smiling.
"Pass the plate over to me, so that I may empty it into the basket," came from Ma.
"So aunt writes that Rönnow is going to stay all winter in Paris."
"Rönnow, yes—but I shall amuse myself very well by reading aloud to her this winter Gedecke's Travels in Switzerland,—and then give her small doses of my trip."
"Now you are talking without thinking, Inger-Johanna. There is always a great difference between that which is within the circle of culture and desolate wild tracts up here in the mountain region."
Ma's bonnet-covered head bowed down behind the pea-vines.
"Father says that it is surely because they want to use him at Stockholm that he is going to perfect himself in French."