t the beauty around you. Here is peace, peace
and rest.

He hurried up to the house, and in--it might help matters if he could
take his wife in his arms; perhaps get her to come out with him a while.

Merle was in the pantry, with a big apron on, ranging jars of preserves
on the shelves.

"Here, dearest little wife," cried Peer, throwing his arms about her,
"what do you say to a little run?"

"Now? Do you suppose a housewife has nothing better to do than gad
about? Uf! my hair! you'll make it come down."

Peer took her arm and led her over to a window looking out on the lake.
"There, dearest! Isn't it lovely here?"

"Peer, you've asked me that twenty times a day ever since we came."

"Yes, and you never answer. And you've never once yet run and thrown
your arms round my neck and said how happy you were. And it's never yet
come to pass that you've given me a single kiss of your own accord."

"I should think not, when you steal such a lot." And she pushed him
aside, and slipped under his arm, and ran out of the room. "I must go in
and see mother again to-day," she said as she went.

"Huit! Of course!" He paced up and down the room, his step growing
more and more impatient. "In to mother--in to mother! Always and
everlastingly mother and mother and nothing else. Huit!" and he began to
whistle.

Merle put her head in at the door. "Peer--have you such a terrible lot
of spare time?"

"Well, yes and no. I'm busy enough looking about in every corner here
for something or another. But I can't find it, and I don't even know
exactly what it is. Oh well, yes--I have plenty of time to spare."

"But what about the farm?"

"Well, there's the dairy-woman in the cow-house, and the groom in the
stables, and the bailiff to worry the tenants and workpeople. What am I
to do--poke around making improvements?"

"But what about the machine-shop?"

"Don't I go in twice a day--cycle over to see how things are going? But
with Rode for manager--that excellent and high-principled engineer--"

"Surely you could help him in some way?"

"He's got to go on running along the line of rails he's used to--nothing
else for it, my darling. And four or five thousand crowns a year, net
profit--why, it's magnificent!"

"But couldn't you extend the business?"

He raised his eyebrows, and his mouth pursed itself up.

"Extend--did you say extend? Extend a--a doll's house!"

"Oh, Peer, you shouldn't laugh at it--a thing that father took so