“Did you see the Captain down below? Had he come back yet?” I broke in.
“He's just come back. Looked like a skeleton, he did. What was I going to say?... When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow,” I said.
“So soon?” Lars was all friendliness, and wishing me good luck now; he had not thought I should be going off at once.
“It's all a chance if I see you again this time,” he said. “But I'll tell you this much, now: you'd do well to stop frittering your life away any more, and never staying on a place for good. And I say as much here and now, so mark my words. I dare say I haven't got on so grandly myself, but I don't know many of our likes have done better, and anyway not you. I've a roof over my head at the least, and a wife and children, and two cows—one bears autumn and one spring—and then a pig, and that's all I can say I own. So better not boast about that. But if you reckon it up, it amounts to a bit of a holding after all.”
“It's all very well for you, the way you've got on,” said I.
Lars is friendlier than ever after this appreciation; he wishes me no end of good, and goes on:
“There's none could get on better than yourself, for that matter. With the knack you've got for all kinds of work, and writing and figuring into the bargain. But it's your own fault. You might have done as I told you these six, seven years ago, and taken one of the other girls on the place, like I did with Emma, and settled down here for good. Then you wouldn't be going about now from place to place. But I say the same again now.”
“It's too late,” I answered.
“Ay, you're terribly grey. I don't know who you could reckon to get now about here. How old are you now?”