Ruster. This is the warmest place in the house.
Liljekrona. How is it going? (Looking over Ruster’s shoulder.) You haven’t forgotten how a page ought to look, have you, Ruster?
Ruster. No, I can copy, but I cannot play. I have almost forgotten the sound of my flute. Nobody wants a flute-player nowadays! They do not care for music any more in Varmland and they do not want to learn.
Liljekrona. Yes, Varmland is not like Ekeby when we knew it.
Ruster. It’s a pity we ever left there, Liljekrona! We have never had such playing since—you with your violin and I with my flute. Old Torwaldson waving his angry stick! By Heaven, he called the souls out of us!
Liljekrona. Yes, the violins sobbing—then the horns, the winds, the basses—each breaking over the other in thundering waves.
Ruster. Holy Mother!—that was living!
Liljekrona. And from one patron off on the road to another, and along the way, what gay evenings in the tent and at the inn when a man was free from care!
Ruster. How you could play then! Shall I forget that night in Olaf’s garden? You made your fiddle sing as though your heart were in tune with its strings. But now, Christ’s blood! you never play like that.
Olga. He plays more beautifully now than he ever did at Ekeby.