When her aunt clattered down to the kitchen, Clara went to dust the parlour. Since there was not much there to dust, this did not take very long. Olaf had built the house new for her before their marriage, but her interest in furnishing it had been short-lived. It went, indeed, little beyond a bathtub and her piano. They had disagreed about almost every other article of furniture, and Clara had said she would rather have her house empty than full of things she didn't want. The house was set in a hillside, and the west windows of the parlour looked out above the kitchen yard thirty feet below. The east windows opened directly into the front yard. At one of the latter, Clara, while she was dusting, heard a low whistle. She did not turn at once, but listened intently as she drew her cloth slowly along the round of a chair. Yes, there it was:
I dreamt that I dwelt in ma-a-arble halls.
She turned and saw Nils Ericson laughing in the sunlight, his hat in his hand, just outside the window. As she crossed the room he leaned against the wire screen. “Aren't you at all surprised to see me, Clara Vavrika?”
“No; I was expecting to see you. Mother Ericson telephoned Olaf last night that you were here.”
Nils squinted and gave a long whistle. “Telephoned? That must have been while Eric and I were out walking. Isn't she enterprising? Lift this screen, won't you?”
Clara lifted the screen, and Nils swung his leg across the window-sill. As he stepped into the room she said: “You didn't think you were going to get ahead of your mother, did you?”
He threw his hat on the piano. “Oh, I do sometimes. You see, I'm ahead of her now. I'm supposed to be in Anders' wheat-field. But, as we were leaving, Mother ran her car into a soft place beside the road and sank up to the hubs. While they were going for the horses to pull her out, I cut away behind the stacks and escaped.” Nils chuckled. Clara's dull eyes lit up as she looked at him admiringly.
“You've got them guessing already. I don't know what your mother said to Olaf over the telephone, but be came back looking as if he'd seen a ghost, and he didn't go to bed until a dreadful hour—ten o'clock, I should think. He sat out on the porch in the dark like a graven image. It had been one of his talkative days, too.” They both laughed, easily and lightly, like people who have laughed a great deal together; but they remained standing.
“Anders and Otto and Peter looked as if they had seen ghosts, too, over in the threshing field. What's the matter with them all?”
Clara gave him a quick, searching look. “Well, for one thing, they've always been afraid you have the other will.”