“It's all a chance if I see you again this time,” he said. “But I'll tell you this much, now: you'd do well to stop frittering your life away any more, and never staying on a place for good. And I say as much here and now, so mark my words. I dare say I haven't got on so grandly myself, but I don't know many of our likes have done better, and anyway not you. I've a roof over my head at the least, and a wife and children, and two cows--one bears autumn and one spring--and then a pig, and that's all I can say I own. So better not boast about that. But if you reckon it up, it amounts to a bit of a holding after all.” “It's all very well for you, the way you've got on,” said I. Lars is friendlier than ever after this appreciation; he wishes me no end of good, and goes on: “There's none could get on better than yourself, for that matter. With the knack you've got for all kinds of work, and writing and figuring into the bargain. But it's your own fault. You might have done as I told you these six, seven years ago, and taken one of the other girls on the place, like I did with Emma, and settled down here for good. Then you wouldn't be going about now from place to place. But I say the same again now.” “It's too late,” I answered. “Ay, you're terribly grey. I don't know who you could reckon to get now about here. How old are you now?” “Don't ask me!” “Not exactly a young one, perhaps, but still--What was I going to say? Come up with me a little, and maybe I'll remember.” I walked up, and Lars went on talking all the way. He offered to put in a word for me with the Captain, so I could get a clearing like he had. “Funny to go and forget a thing like that,” he said. “It's gone clean out of my head. But come up home now. I'll be sure to hit on it again.” All friendliness he was now. But I had one or two things to do myself, and would not go farther. “You won't see the Captain tonight, anyway.” No, but it was late. Emma would be in bed, and would only be a trouble. “Not a bit of it,” said Lars. “And if she has gone to bed, what of it? I shouldn't wonder, now, if there was a shirt of yours up there, too. Better come up and take it with you, and save Emma going all the way down herself.” But I would not go up. I ventured, however, to send a greeting to Emma this time. “Ay, surely,” said Lars. “And if so be as you haven't time to come up to my bit of a place now, why, there it is. You'll be going off first thing tomorrow, I suppose?” It slipped my mind for the moment that I should not be able to see the Captain that evening, and I answered now that I should be leaving as early as could be. “Well, then, I'll send Emma down with that shirt of yours at once,” said Lars. “And good luck to you. And don't forget what I said.” And that was farewell to Lars.