Probably she had never asked them to remain with her.  “Think you, Roedlinna, that I would ask them to stay here with me, when they can go out in the world and have things comfortable?” she would say as she stood in the stall with the old cow.  “Here in Smaland they have only poverty to look forward to.”

But when the last grandchild was gone, it was all up with the mistress.  All at once she became bent and gray, and tottered as she walked; as if she no longer had the strength to move about.  She stopped working.  She did not care to look after the farm, but let everything go to rack and ruin.  She didn’t repair the houses; and she sold both the cows and the oxen.  The only one that she kept was the old cow who now talked with Thumbietot.  Her she let live because all the children had tended her.

She could have taken maids and farm-hands into her service, who would have helped her with the work, but she couldn’t bear to see strangers around her, since her own had deserted her.  Perhaps she was better satisfied to let the farm go to ruin, since none of her children were coming back to take it after she was gone.  She did not mind that she herself became poor, because she didn’t value that which was only hers.  But she was troubled lest the children should find out how hard she had it.  “If only the children do not hear of this!  If only the children do not hear of this!” she sighed as she tottered through the cowhouse.

The children wrote constantly, and begged her to come out to them; but this she did not wish.  She didn’t want to see the land that had taken them from her.  She was angry with it.  “It’s foolish of me, perhaps, that I do not like that land which has been so good for them,” said she.  “But I don’t want to see it.”

She never thought of anything but the children, and of this—­that they must needs have gone.  When summer came, she led the cow out to graze in the big swamp.  All day she would sit on the edge of the swamp, her hands in her lap; and on the way home she would say:  “You see, Roedlinna, if there had been large, rich fields here, in place of these barren swamps, then there would have been no need for them to leave.”

She could become furious with the swamp which spread out so big, and did no good.  She could sit and talk about how it was the swamp’s fault that the children had left her.

This last evening she had been more trembly and feeble than ever before.  She could not even do the milking.  She had leaned against the manger and talked about two strangers who had been to see her, and had asked if they might buy the swamp.  They wanted to drain it, and sow and raise grain on it.  This had made her both anxious and glad.  “Do you hear, Roedlinna,” she had said, “do you hear they said that grain can grow on the swamp?  Now I shall write to the children to come home.  Now they’ll not have to stay away any longer; for now they can get their bread here at home.”  It was this that she had gone into the cabin to do—­