A long, restless night.
At noon, when we men came home from the fields next day, the maids were whispering something about a scene between the Captain and his wife. Ragnhild knew all about it. The Captain had noticed his wife with her hair down the night before, and the lamp out upstairs, and laughed at her hair and said wasn't it pretty! And Fruen said nothing much at first, but waited her chance, and then she said: “Yes, I know. I like to let my hair down now and again, and why not? It isn't yours!” She was none so clever, poor thing, at answering back in a quarrel.
Then Elisabet had come up and put in her word. And she was smarter—prrr! Fruen did manage to say: “Well, anyhow we were in the house, but you two were sitting out among the bushes!” And Elisabet turned sharp at that, and snapped out: “We didn't put out the light!” “And if we did,” said Fruen, “it made no difference; we came down directly after.”
Heavens! I thought to myself, why ever didn't she say they put the light out because they were going down?
That was the end of it for a while. But then, later on, the Captain said something about Fruen being so much older than Elisabet. “You ought always to wear your hair down,” he said. “On my word, it made you look quite a girl!” “Oh yes, I dare say I need it now,” answered Fruen. But seeing Elisabet turn away laughing, she flared up all of a sudden and told her to take herself off. And Elisabet put her hands on her hips, and asked the Captain to order her carriage. “Right!” says the Captain at that; “and I'll drive you myself!”
All this Ragnhild had heard for herself standing close by.
I thought to myself they were jealous, the pair of them—she, of this sitting out in the shrubbery, and he, of her letting her hair down and putting out the light.
As we came out of the kitchen, and were going across for a rest, there was the Captain busy with Elisabet's carriage. He called me up and said:
“I ought not to ask you now, when you're having your rest, but I wish you'd go down and mend the door of the summer-house for me.”
“Right!” I said.