“Come in, then, and we’ll talk this over with the Paymaster of the Regiment,” the old mistress said with tears of joy in her eyes. “God willing, we’ll never part again so long as we live,” she added. Nor did they. The housekeeper’s husband probably knew it would be useless for him to try to get her back. At all events, he never came to fetch her. The wedding ring she removed from her finger and laid away in her trunk. Nothing more was said about that episode in her life. Lieutenant Lagerlöf’s little daughters should have felt quite easy in their minds on hearing this; but for a long time afterward they were troubled. Since that carpenter was still alive he might come some day and take her away. Whenever they looked down the road they expected to see him coming. Nurse Maja had told them that if he came and demanded the return of his wife, she would have to go with him. They did not know just how old the housekeeper was. She herself had forgotten the year of her birth, and the date set down in the parish register was said not to be authentic. She must have been over seventy; but for all that, the carpenter might want her back--fine, capable woman that she was. Then what would happen to Mårbacka! IV THE MANSERVANTS’ COTTAGE IN OLDEN times, when the master had to furnish the clothing for all the servants on his place, the womenfolk must have had their hands full of work the year round. Through the long, dark winter mornings and the long, dark winter evenings, they sat at the spinning wheels drawing out the threads for warp and weft. But the weaving itself was not begun until the spring, when the days grew longer; for such work cannot be done in semi-darkness. In order to get the coarse wadmal and fine woollen cloth, the linen and cotton webs finished by summer, when the parish tailor came, they had to put speed into the looms. But if a loom stood in the kitchen the work did not go very fast. The weavers should have a place to themselves, where they can work without interruptions. Therefore, in former days every well-conducted farmstead had its special loom-room, and, of course, Mårbacka had one also. This was from the time of the clergymen. They had added a story to the manservants’ cottage consisting of two rooms, with clay-coated walls and boarded ceilings; and in each was a tile-stove. The back room was occupied by the farm overseer; and in the front room stood two looms, one at either window. The loom-room was in use even in Lieutenant Lagerlöf’s time, though it was then no longer the custom to pay one’s serving-folk their earnings in clothing but in money. It was Fru Lagerlöf’s great delight to sit at a loom weaving towelling, bed linen, table linen, floor mats, curtains, furniture coverings, and dress fabrics--in fact, everything of that sort needed in the home. All summer long she had her looms going.