the grave. What--not
dead? Well, well, we've much to be thankful for, and that's a solemn
word! Me talking nonsense, you say? Oh, if I'd never more to answer
for! How was I to know your uncle he was lying there a sham and a
false pretender before the Lord? Not long to live, that's what I said.
And I'll hold by it, when the time comes, before the Throne. What's
that you say? Well, and wasn't he lying there his very self in his
bed, and folding his hands on his breast and saying 'twould soon be
over?"

There was no arguing with Oline, she bewildered her adversaries with
talk and cast them down. When she learned that Uncle Sivert had sent
for Eleseus, she grasped at that too, and made her own advantage of
it: "There you are, and see if I was talking nonsense. Here's old
Sivert calling up his kinsfolk and longing for a sight of his own
flesh and blood; ay, he's nearing his end! You can't refuse him,
Eleseus; off with you at once this minute and see your uncle while
there's life in him. I'm going that way too, we'll go together."

Oline did not leave Sellanraa without taking Inger aside for more
whisperings of Barbro. "Not a word I've said--but I could see the
signs of it! And now I suppose she'll be wife and all on the farm
there. Ay, there's some folk are born to great things, for all they
may be small as the sands of the sea in their beginnings. And who'd
have ever thought it of that girl Barbro! Axel, yes, never doubt but
he's a toiling sort and getting on, and great fine lands and means and
all like you've got here--'tis more than we know of over on our side
the hills, as you know's a true word, Inger, being born and come of
the place yourself. Barbro, she'd a trifle of wool in a chest; 'twas
naught but winter wool, and I wasn't asking and she never offered me.
We said but _Goddag_ and _Farvel_, for all that I'd known her from she
was a toddling child all that time I was here at Sellanraa by reason
of you being away and learning knowledge at the Institute...."

"There's Rebecca crying," said Inger, breaking in on Oline. But she
gave her a handful of wool.

Then a great thanksgiving speech from Oline: ay, wasn't it just as she
had said to Barbro herself of Inger, and how there was not her like
to be found for giving to folk; ay, she'd give till she was bare, and
give her fingers to the bone, and never complain. Ay, go in and see to
the sweet angel, and never was there a child in the world so like her
mother as Rebec