The captain was off in the woods again, and would of course come home with a tough old hare, on which one had to use more butter in cooking it than it was worth itself. That’s what he called getting food for the house. Still, it would do, if only he did not come with a miserable fox, the worst beast our Lord ever made; no use, whether dead or alive.
And the captain’s wife, yes, she was not up yet. She lay abed and read novels, just as she had always done. She was not made for work, that God’s angel.
No, that could be done by some one who was old and gray like Ulrika Dillner, working night and day to keep the whole miserable affair together. And it wasn’t always so easy; for it was the truth that for one whole winter they had not had in that house any other meat than bear-hams. And big wages she did not expect; so far she had never seen any; but they would not turn her out on the roadside either, when she couldn’t work any longer in return for her food. They treated a house-maid like a human being in that house, and they would one of these days give old Ulrika a good burial if they had anything to buy the coffin with.
“For who knows how it will be?” she bursts out, and wipes her eyes, which are always so quick to tears. “We have debts to the wicked Sintram, and he can take everything from us. Of course Ferdinand is engaged to the rich Anna Stjärnhök; but she is tired,—she is tired of him. And what will become of us, of our three cows, and our nine horses, of our gay young ladies who want to go from one ball to another, of our dry fields where nothing grows, of our mild Ferdinand, who will never be a real man? What will become of the whole blessed house, where everything thrives except work?”
But dinner-time came, and the family gathered. The good Ferdinand, the gentle son of the house, and the lively daughters came home with the borrowed horse-radish. The captain came, fortified by a bath in a hole in the ice and a tramp through the woods. He threw up the window to get more air, and shook Gösta’s hand with a strong grip. And his wife came, dressed in silk, with wide laces hanging over her white hands, which Gösta was allowed to kiss.
They all greeted Gösta with joy; jests flew about the circle; gayly they asked him:—
“How are you all at Ekeby; how is it in that promised land?”
“Milk and honey flow there,” he answered. “We empty the mountains of iron and fill our cellar with wine. The fields bear gold, with which we gild life’s misery, and we cut down our woods to build bowling-alleys and summer houses.”
The captain’s wife sighed and smiled at his answer, and her lips murmured the word,—