He felt ill at ease, anxious, and in fear. All their future depended on how he framed his words now; if he could say the thing as it must be said.
"If only we could have been there too," said his wife. "If I could but have stood at a street corner and seen him go by."
"No need for you to have stood at street corners," said Joel. "It says here there was a special steamer for parents and relatives to meet them."
The look of joy faded suddenly from her face. "Eh, Joel," she sighed. "Little good it would have been if we'd been there. They'd never have let you nor me go on that steamer boat. She wouldn't have let us."
"She" was Mor Elversson's word for the English lady that had taken away her son. She had never forgiven her for forbidding her son to write to his parents. And in her thoughts this stranger woman had become a monster.
"I doubt but they'd have let us see him, all the same," said Joel.
It was some relief to him, in a way, that his wife laid stress on little details such as this. He needed time to collect his thoughts before he could break the news to her. All their future depended on how it was said and taken; he told himself this again and again, as if to urge his mind to the effort.
"Never believe it!" cried the woman, stubbornly, with a toss of her head. "When she never so much as let him write a line all these years. And I doubt but he's little thought for us, anyway. Nine years old he was, when he went away, and sense enough, if he'd cared, to write without her knowing. But it's plain enough; she's put it into his head how we were common folk, and not the sort for a little young gentleman to be asking about."
All her joy was gone and vanished now; the thoughts that had plagued her so often in the past came back with renewed force.
"I'll admit," said her husband—"I'll admit it's a strange thing Sven shouldn't have written a single word to us all that time. And it may well be 'twas their fault that wouldn't let him. I heard something up at the church to-day."