Involuntarily she glanced across at the house. It was a good-sized place in itself, but in such a state of dilapidation as to be largely uninhabitable; the pair lived now in one small outbuilding, which the previous tenants, sea-captains all, had used for kitchen and larder. "If only he'd had a liking for the sea," went on Mor Elversson to herself, "like his father and grandfather before him. He'd have laid by something now, and we'd be able to look forward to old age in ease and comfort. But he's always been set on farming and field work and such, and little enough it's brought us." She did not move from her place while her husband was speaking, but her little head, that moved quickly and easily as a bird's, turned slightly as she glanced over the patches of cornfield and potato, little islands of growth among the barren rock that formed the greater part of the island. Every little strip of cultivation was her husband's work; the very soil was, in a manner of speaking, his creation. He had brought endless boatloads of earth and manure to Grimön, in the firm conviction that he must one day reap a rich reward for his pains. "All that trouble for so many bits of earth, and poor at that," thought his wife to herself. "Needs but one good northerly gale at Whitsuntide, and all the sowing and planting'd be nowhere Nay, 'tis to the sea we should look for our daily bread, living here as we do. There's neither right nor reason in it else." Another movement of the quick little head, and she was looking out through the space between the tumbledown old house and the cottage, over the broad, gleaming surface of the water beyond. "Ay, the sea," she sighed. "'Tis different with that. Freights and cargoes and good money paid. If I'd been a man, I'd have gone to sea from the first, and never taken up with the farm work at all. And here we're getting old and older, and what's to become of us when we're past work? There's none of the children'd stay at home to toil and moil that away--and small blame to them for that." The last words must have been spoken aloud, for her husband turned sharply toward her. He had been describing the perils and hardships of an English expedition recently returned from the Arctic, and broke off now in the middle of a sentence. "You're not listening," he said. But it was doubtless not the first time he had found himself talking to deaf ears, for he seemed neither surprised nor annoyed. "Indeed I was," his wife assured him. "I was thinking this very moment how fine you talk, and how you'd do for a preacher." "I don't know about that," said the husband, with a laugh. "If I can't keep one listener from thinking of all and sundry when I'm preaching, how'd I manage with a congregation?"