“They've always such a lot to talk about, those two. She never comes here but they go off for long walks together.”
“And what does Fru Falkenberg say to that?”
“I've never heard she troubled about it any way.”
“And Elisabet, hasn't she any children either?”
“Ay, she's many.”
“But how can she get away so often with that big place and the children to look after?”
“It's all right as long as Erik's mother's alive. She can get away all she wants.”
He went out as he spoke, leaving me alone. In this room I had sat once working out the construction of an improved timber saw. How earnest I was about it all! Petter, the farm-hand, lay sick in the room next door, and I would hurry out eagerly whenever I'd any hammering to do, and get it done outside. Now that patent saw's just literature to me, no more. So the years deal with us all.
Nils comes in again.
“If the visitors aren't gone tomorrow, I'll take a couple of their horses for the ploughing,” says he, thinking only of his own affairs.