V
All the guests are gone—stout Captain Bror, the lady with the shawl, Engineer Lassen as well. And Captain Falkenberg is getting ready to start for manoeuvres at last. It struck me that he must have applied for leave on very special grounds, or he would have been away on duty long before this.
We farm-hands have been hard at work in the fields the last few days—a heavy strain on man and beast. But Nils knew what he was doing; he wanted to gain time for something else.
One day he set me to work cleaning up all round outside the house and buildings. It took all the time gained and more, but it made the whole place look different altogether. And that was what Nils wanted—to cheer the Captain up a little before he left home. And I turned to of my own accord and fixed up a loose pale or so in the garden fence, straightened the door of a shed that was wry on its hinges, and such-like. And the barn bridge, too, needed mending. I thought of putting in new beams.
“Where will you be going when you leave here?” asked the Captain.
“I don't know. I'll be on the road for a bit.”
“I could do with you here for a while; there's a lot of things that want doing.”
“Captain was thinking of paintwork, maybe?”
“Painting, too—yes. I'm not sure about that, though; it would be a costly business, with the outbuildings and all. No, I was thinking of something else. Do you know anything about timber, now? Could you mark down for yourself?”
It pleased him, then, to pretend he did not recognize me from the time I had worked in his timber before. But was there anything left now to fell? I answered him: