"Ay, what's happened," said Ung-Joel, bitterly. "Little use that Olaus and Corfitzson and all the rest of them have turned better than they've ever been before, and can boast of a clean ship and a good season and a fine price for their fish, and the money well looked after, when they can't set foot in their own house but they're met by crying womenfolk. What's a man to do, when his own wife comes and begs and prays him and says better go on in the old way, bad as it was, than work and share with one that's done dreadful things like Sven. Says a man can't go near one that's done things like that without getting such himself that none can bear the sight of him after. Houses put to rights and boats and dresses and food and decency and comfort—they'd give it all and gladly, to be free of the one ugly thought. When things turn that way, what can a man do but go to Sven himself and beg of him to take off his hand from off the ship and crew, and say he'd better go back to Grimön and stay there, where there's none that's likely to meet him and be the worse for it."
[THE SCHOOLHOUSE]
THAT spring, soon after Sven had come back from the herring fishery, old Joel Elversson was asked by the Priest at Applum if he would care to undertake the building of the new schoolhouse.
Joel had done a good deal of building work before in the parish, and so cheaply that he had made but little for himself. And this was perhaps the reason why he was chosen now, though many might well have thought him too old for the work.
As soon as Mor Thala heard of the proposal, she at once declared that Joel was no longer able to undertake work of such responsibility, and her husband did not altogether oppose her view. But he pointed out that it would be hard if the parish were forced to get in a stranger for the work. And he himself would gladly have had some share in building a new school for the children, who had for long had to put up with the old and dark and draughty building that served at present.
"You should see the plans," he said to Mor Thala. "The things they hit on nowadays to make all fine and easy. They'd no such contrivances in my young days."
"You're set on that building work yourself, that's plain to see," said his wife. "It's my belief you've promised to take it on already."
The old man looked embarrassed.
"I'd not have done it if it wasn't that I'd a grown son in the house," he said.
"But surely you should have asked him first," said his wife. So much foresight and sharpness on the part of her husband was a surprise to her. Sven had been going about for some days looking moody and depressed; it seemed impossible to get him to undertake any work at all.