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It did not occur to him, for instance, to count the sheep. He did not trouble about further counting of the stock at all. After all, Oline was not as bad as she might have been; she kept house for him after a fashion, and looked to his cattle; she was merely a fool, and that was worst for herself. Let her stay, let her live she was not worth troubling about.
"I don't know where it'll ever end," says Oline, with her eyes turned heavenwards. And Oline stays the night. Next morning she goes off again. Once more she has a bundle of something with her. Isak is working in the quarry, and she goes another way round, so that he shall not see. Two hours later, Oline comes back again, steps into the house, and asks at once: "Where is Isak?"
"We must do something for Oline, too," said Uncle Sivert, "she being a widow and not well off. There'll be enough for little Sivert, anyhow." Eleseus managed it with a few strokes of the pen; a mere codicil to the last will and testament, and lo, Oline was also a sharer in the inheritance. "I'll look after you," said Uncle Sivert to her.
Here Barbro put in a word, and was unwise enough to say: "Well, what you've got to complain of, I'd like to know, when I bring you in your meals and all myself? As for coffee, I've said you're better without it, and meaning well." "Is that Barbro?" says Oline, turning just her eyes and no more to look for her; ay, she is poorly is Oline, and a pitiful sight with her eyes screwed round cornerways.
"It's all your fault," wails Inger, beginning to cry. "My fault? I wish I may never have more to answer for!" "I'll ask Os-Anders, anyhow, be sure of that." "Ay, do." They talk it all over quietly, and Oline seems less revengeful now.
"He might have stood forth an upright man and a wealthy before the Lamb and before the Throne," said Oline, "if they hadn't robbed him." Isak was standing ready to go out to his fields, and Oline said: "Pity you've got to go now, Isak; then I shan't see the new machine, after all. You've got a new machine, they say?" "Ay."
A man living in the wilds has much to think of, to reckon out and fit in as best can be. It is not the busiest time for him just now, but he is anxious about the children, left all alone with Oline. He thinks, as he walks, of the first time he had come that way.
All through that summer, Oline kept a look-out for every passer-by, and whispered to them and nodded and confided things to them in secret. "But never a word I've said," so she charged them every time. Oline went down to the village, too, more than once.
"Why didn't you come to the sale, then, and bid with the rest?" "Me ay, 'tis like you to make a jest of poor folk." "Well, and I thought 'twas you had grown rich and grand. Wasn't it you had left you old Sivert's chest and all his money in? He he he!" Oline was not pleased, not softened at being minded of that legacy. "Ay, old Sivert, he'd a kindly thought for me, and I'll not say otherwise.
When he had finished, he said: "There now, Eleseus, and you, Sivert, 'tis your mother herself has written that letter and learned all these things. Even that little tiny sister of yours, she knows more than all the rest of us here. Remember that!" The boys sat still, wondering in silence. "Ay, 'tis a grand thing," said Oline. And what did she mean by that?
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