The old ladies look at her with a certain anxiety. They remember so well Countess Märta. She had been just as joyous and good and beloved when she first came to Borg. And she had become a vain and pleasure-seeking coquette, who never could think of anything but her amusements. “If she only had a husband who could keep her at work!” say the old ladies. “If she only could learn to weave!” For weaving was a consolation for everything; it swallowed up all other interests, and had been the saving of many a woman. The young countess wants to be a good housekeeper. She knows nothing better than as a happy wife to live in a comfortable home, and she often comes at balls, and sits down beside the old people. “Henrik wants me to learn to be a capable housekeeper,” she says, “just as his mother is. Teach me how to weave!” Then the old people heave a sigh: first, over Count Henrik, who can think that his mother was a good housekeeper; and then over the difficulty of initiating this young, ignorant creature in such a complicated thing. It was enough to speak to her of heddles, and harnesses, and warps, and woofs,[2] to make her head spin. No one who sees the young countess can help wondering why she married stupid Count Henrik. It is a pity for him who is stupid, wherever he may be. And it is the greatest pity for him who is stupid and lives in Värmland. There are already many stories of Count Henrik’s stupidity, and he is only a little over twenty years old. They tell how he entertained Anna Stjärnhök on a sleighing party a few years ago. “You are very pretty, Anna,” he said. “How you talk, Henrik!” “You are the prettiest girl in the whole of Värmland.” “That I certainly am not.” “The prettiest in this sleighing party at any rate.” “Alas, Henrik, I am not that either.” “Well, you are the prettiest in this sledge, that you can’t deny.” No, that she could not. For Count Henrik is no beauty. He is as ugly as he is stupid. They say of him that that head on the top of his thin neck has descended in the family for a couple of hundred years. That is why the brain is so worn out in the last heir. “It is perfectly plain that he has no head of his own,” they say. “He has borrowed his father’s. He does not dare to bend it; he is afraid of losing it,—he is already yellow and wrinkled. The head has been in use with both his father and grandfather. Why should the hair otherwise be so thin and the lips so bloodless and the chin so pointed?” He always has scoffers about him, who encourage him to say stupid things, which they save up, circulate, and add to. It is lucky for him that he does not notice it. He is solemn and dignified in everything he does. He moves formally, he holds himself straight, he never turns his head without turning his whole body.