then?"

"Don't ask me," said Barbro. "Or perhaps you've got a place for them
to be there?"

Axel was still loth to quarrel with her, but he could not help letting
her see he was surprised at her, just a little surprised. "You're
getting more and more cross and hard," said he, "though you don't mean
any harm, belike."

"I mean every word I say," she answered. "And why couldn't you have
let my folks come up here?--answer me that! Then I'd have had mother
to help me a bit. But you think, perhaps, I've so little to do, I've
no need of help?"

There was some sense in this, of course, but also much that was
unreasonable altogether. If Bredes had come, they would have had to
live in the hut, and Axel would have had no place for his beasts--as
badly off as before. What was the woman getting at?--had she neither
sense nor wit in her head?

"Look here," said he, "you'd better have a servant-girl to help."

"Now--with the winter coming on and less to do than ever? No, you
should have thought of that when I needed it."

Here, again, she was right in a way; when she had been heavy and
ailing--that was the time to talk of help. But then Barbro herself had
done her work all the time as if nothing were the matter; she had been
quick and clever as usual, did all that had to be done, and had never
spoken a word about getting help.

"Well, I can't make it out, anyway," said he hopelessly.

Silence.

Barbro asked: "What's this about you taking over the telegraph after
father?"

"What? Who said a word about that?"

"Well, they say it's to be."

"Why," said Axel, "it may come to something; I'll not say no."

"Ho!"

But why d'you ask?"

"Nothing," said Barbro; "only that you've turned my father out of
house and home, and now you're taking the bread out of his mouth."

Silence.

Oh, but that was the end of Axel's patience. "I'll tell you this," he
cried, "you're not worth all I've done for you and yours!"

"Ho!" said Barbro.

"No!" said he, striking his fist on the table. And then he got up.

"You can't frighten me, so don't think," whimpered Barbro, and moved
over nearer the wall.

"Frighten you?" he said again, and sniffed scornfully. "I'm going to
speak out now in earnest. What about that child? Did you drown it?"

"Drown it?"

"Ay. It's been in the water."

"Ho, so you've seen it? You've been--" "sniffing at it," she was going
to say, but dared not; Axel was not to be played with just then, by
his looks.