The Captain was still away on duty when I arrived; he would be back in a week. As it was, Grindhusen was very well received; Nils was quite pleased to find I had brought my mate along, and refused to let me keep him to help with the painting, but sent him off on his own responsibility to work in the turnip and potato fields. There was no end of work--weeding and thinning out--and Nils was already in the thick of the hay-making. He was the same splendid, earnest farmer as ever. At the first rest, while the horses were feeding, he took me out over the ground to look at the crops. Everything was doing well; but it had been a late spring that year, and the cat's-tail was barely forming as yet, while the clover had just begun to show bloom. The last rain had beaten down a lot of the first-year grass, and it could not pick up again, so Nils had put on the mowing-machine. We walked back home through waving grass and corn; there was a whispering in the winter rye and the stout six-rowed barley. Nils, who had not forgotten his schooling, called to mind that beautiful line of Bjørnson's: “_Beginning like a whisper in the corn one summer day_.” “Time to get the horses out again,” said Nils, stepping out a little. And waving his hand once more out over the fields, he said: “What a harvest we'll have this year if we can only get it safely in!” So Grindhusen went off to work in the fields, and I fell to on the painting. I started with the barn, and all that was to be red; then I did over the flagstaff and the summer-house down among the lilacs with the first coat of oil. The house itself I meant to leave till the last. It was built in good old-fashioned country style, with rich, heavy woodwork and a carved border, _à la grecque_, above the doorway. It was yellow as it was, and a new lot of yellow paint had come in to do with this time. I took upon myself, however, to send the yellow back, and get another colour in exchange. In my judgment the house ought to be stone-grey, with doors and window-frames and verge-boards white. But that would be for the Captain to decide. But though every one on the place was as nice as could be, and the cook in authority lenient, and Ragnhild as bright-eyed as ever, we all felt it dull with the master and mistress away. All save Grindhusen, honest fellow, who was quite content. Decent work and good food soon set him up again, and in a few days he was happy and waxing fat. His one anxiety was lest the Captain should turn him off when he came home. But no such thing--Grindhusen was allowed to stay. IX The Captain arrived. I was giving the barn its second coat; at the sound of his voice I came down from the ladder. He bade me welcome. “Running away from your money like that!” he said. And I fancied he looked at me with some suspicion as he asked: “What did you do that for?” I answered simply that I had no idea of presuming to make him a present of my work; the money could stand over, that was all.