I get my food and go out again. No sign
of master or mistress anywhere.
But I cannot sit idle in the men's room all the evening; I walk up to the
field and talk to my two fellow-workers. Nils, the foreman, is from a farm
a little north of here, but, not being the eldest son, and having no farm
of his own to run, he has been sensible enough to take service here at
Ovrebo for the time being. And, indeed, he might have done worse. The
Captain himself was not paying more and more attention to his land,
rather, perhaps, less and less, and he was away so much that the man had
to use his own judgment many a time. This last autumn, for instance, he
has turned up a big stretch of waste land that he is going to sow. He
points out over the ground, showing where he's ploughed and what's to lie
over: "See that bit there how well it's coming on."
It is good to hear how well this young man knows his work; I find a
pleasure in his sensible talk. He has been to one of the State schools,
too, and learned how to keep accounts of stock, entering loads of hay in
one column and the birth dates of the calves in another.
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