"
"Yes," said Ragnhild, getting up. "But I side with the Captain after all,
and no mistake, whatever you say. Yes, that I do."
"It's none so easy to know what's right."
"Only think of letting that engineer creature.... How she ever could, I
don't know! And then to go down and stay with him there, after, as she
did; what a thing to do! And she's all those handkerchiefs of his, ever so
many, and a lot of her own are gone; I suppose they used each other's
anyhow. Lived with him, she said! And she with a husband of her own!"
XII
The Captain has done as he said about the timber; there's a cracking and
crashing in the woods already. And a mild autumn, too, with no frost in
the ground as yet to stop the ploughing; Nils grasps at the time like a
miser, to save as much as possible next spring.
Now comes the question whether Grindhusen and I are to work on the timber.
It crosses my mind that I had intended really to go off for a tramp up in
the hills and over the moors while the berries were there; what about that
journey now? And another thing, Grindhusen was no longer worth his keep as
a wood-cutter; he could hold one end of a saw, but that was about all he
was good for now.
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