So the maids had found me out, I thought to myself, and was ill pleased at the thought. Ragnhild it must be, a devil of a girl, sharp as a needle; she must have said a lot more than Nils was willing to confess. And what if Fruen herself had seen me from the window! I resolved now to be cold and indifferent as ice henceforward all the days of my life. * * * * * Ragnhild is properly in clover. The thick stair carpet muffles every step; she can run upstairs whenever she pleases and slip down again in a moment without a sound. “I can't make it out about Fruen,” says Ragnhild. “Here she's come back, and ought to be happy and good tempered as could be, and instead she's all tears and frowning. I heard the Captain telling her today: 'Now do be a little reasonable, Lovise,' he said. 'I'm sorry, I won't do it any more,' says Fruen; and then she cried because she'd been unreasonable. But that about never doing it any more--she's said that now every day since she came back, but she's done it again, all the same. Poor dear, she'd a toothache today; she was simply crying out with the pain....” “Go and get on with the potatoes, Ragnhild,” said Nils quickly. “We've no time for gossiping now.” We'd all of us our field-work now; there was much to be done. Nils was afraid the corn would spoil if he left it too long at the poles; better to get it in as it was. Well and good; but that meant threshing the worst of it at once, and spreading the grain over the floor of every shed and outhouse. Even in our own big living-room there was a large layer of corn drying on the floor. Any more irons in the fire? Ay, indeed, and all the while hot and waiting. Bad weather has set in, and all the work ought to be done at once. When we've finished threshing, there's the fresh straw to be cut up and salted down in bins to keep it from rotting. That all? Not by a long way: irons enough still glowing hot. Grindhusen and the maids are pulling potatoes. Nils snatches the precious time after a couple of dry days to sow a patch of rye and send the lad over it with the harrow. Lars Falkenberg is still ploughing; he has given way altogether and turned out a fine ploughman since the Captain and Fruen came back. When the corn-land's too soft he ploughs the meadows; then, when sun and wind have dried things a bit, he goes on to the corn-land again. The work goes on steadily and well; in the afternoon the Captain himself comes out to lend a hand. The last load of corn in being brought in. Captain Falkenberg is no child at the work, big and strong he is, and with the right knack of it. See him loading up oats from the drying-frames: his second load now. Just then Fruen comes along down the road, and crosses over to where we are at work. Her eyes are bright. She seems pleased to watch her husband loading up corn. “_Signe Arbejdet!_” [Footnote: “A blessing on the work.”] she says. “Thanks,” says the Captain. “That's what we used to say in Nordland.”