"Yes, he is certainly going to become something great. You can believe we find it ever so snug and pleasant when we are sometimes at home alone and I read aloud to aunt."
Ma's large bonnet, spotted with blue, rose up, and with a table knife in her hand she passed the empty plate back. "And he has the bearing which suits, the higher he gets."
"Quite perfect—but I don't know how it is, one does not care to think about him up here in the country."
Ma stood a moment with the table knife in her hand.
"That will do," she said, as she took up the basket, somewhat troubled—"We shan't have many peas this year," she added, sighing.
Chapter VII
The kitchen at Gilje was completely given over to Christmas preparations.
There was a cold draught from the porch, an odor in the air of mace, ginger, and cloves—a roar of chopping-knives, and dull rumbling and beating so that the floor shook from the wooden mortar, where Great-Ola himself was stationed with a white apron and a napkin around his head.