"I was, but I awoke and heard you had a visitor, so I got up to help, grandma."
Christian Christiansson trembled from head to foot. The silvery voice at his back seemed to come to him from across a wide abyss--for it was a familiar voice but vague as with the mist of dreams and dim as with the clouds of night.
"This is my granddaughter, sir," said Anna. And then Christian Christiansson turned and saw her--a young girl as tall as a woman, with fair complexion, a soft smiling face, and beautiful blue eyes. She wore a laced bodice, a turned-down collar, a hufa, a tassel, plaited hair, and looked like the living picture of what her mother had been when he came from college.
It was his daughter, his little Elin, whom he had traveled so far to see, but it seemed to him as if all the cruel years had rolled back in a moment, and it was Thora returned to life.
II
"Well, now that you are here, you had better lay the table," said Anna.
"Yes, grandma," said the girl.
"Put on the smoked mutton and the Rullapilsa and the Rikling, while I go to the elt-house to make coffee."
"Yes, grandma."
"Make yourself at home, Christian Christiansson--my granddaughter will wait on you."