“Marie van Loos is my betrothed,” he answered. “But it’s all over between us now. Ask her yourself. I expect she’ll be going away soon.”
“Yes, mother, I’m coming,” called Olga in through the window.
“Your mother wasn’t calling you at all; she only looked at you.”
“Yes, but I know what she meant.”
“Oh, very well then! I’ll go. But look you, Olga, you know what I mean too, only you don’t answer me the same way, and say, Yes, I’m coming.”
She opened the door. Rolandsen felt he had abased himself; she would not think of him now as the lordly man he was. He must raise himself once more in her esteem. It would never do to show himself so utterly defeated. So he began talking of death, and was highly humorous about it; now he would have to die, and he didn’t care much if he did. But he had his own ideas about the funeral. He would make a bell himself to ring his knell, and the clapper should be fashioned from the thighbone of an ox, because he had been such a fool in life. And the funeral oration was to be the shortest ever known; the priest to set his foot upon the grave and simply say, “I hereby declare you mortified, null, and void!”
But Olga was getting weary of all this, and had lost her shyness now. Moreover, she had a red ribbon at her throat, like any lady, and the pin was altogether hidden.
“I must make her look up to me properly,” thought Rolandsen. And he said, “Now I did think something would come of this. My former sweetheart, Marie van Loos, she’s broidered and worked me all over with initials till I’m a wonder to see; there’s Olga Rolandsen, or what’s all but the same, on every stitch of my things. And I took it as a sign from Heaven. But I must be going. My best respects....”