“All he does is drink,” declared the housekeeper. “He’s been drunk every day since the wedding. It’s the pure alcohol he should be using in his work he guzzles. I can’t put up any longer with such a swine.”
“But I thought you were to go to the market and buy all your provisions, in order to escape hard work?”
“I’ll work my fingers to the bone for Frua and the children if you’ll only take me back!” vowed the housekeeper. “I’ve wished myself back at Mårbacka day and night since I went away.”
“Come in, then, and we’ll talk this over with the Paymaster of the Regiment,” the old mistress said with tears of joy in her eyes. “God willing, we’ll never part again so long as we live,” she added.
Nor did they. The housekeeper’s husband probably knew it would be useless for him to try to get her back. At all events, he never came to fetch her. The wedding ring she removed from her finger and laid away in her trunk. Nothing more was said about that episode in her life.
Lieutenant Lagerlöf’s little daughters should have felt quite easy in their minds on hearing this; but for a long time afterward they were troubled. Since that carpenter was still alive he might come some day and take her away. Whenever they looked down the road they expected to see him coming. Nurse Maja had told them that if he came and demanded the return of his wife, she would have to go with him.
They did not know just how old the housekeeper was. She herself had forgotten the year of her birth, and the date set down in the parish register was said not to be authentic. She must have been over seventy; but for all that, the carpenter might want her back—fine, capable woman that she was.
Then what would happen to Mårbacka!