They came home with the quarrel at its height.

No, they were not always the best of friends, Axel and Barbro; there was trouble now and again.  She had been with him now for a couple of years, and they had had words before; mostly when Barbro talked of finding another place.  He wanted her to stay there for ever, to settle down there and share the house and life with him; he knew how hard it would be for him if he were left without help again.  And she had promised several times—­ay, in her more affectionate moments she would not think of going away at all.  But the moment they quarrelled about anything, she invariably threatened to go.  If for nothing else, she must go to have her teeth seen to in town.  Go, go away ...  Axel felt he must find a means to keep her.

Keep her?  A lot Barbro cared for his trying to keep her if she didn’t want to stay.

“Ho, so you want to go away again?” said he.

“Well, and if I do?”

“Can you, d’you think?”

“Well, and why not?  If you think I’m afraid because the winter’s coming on ...  But I can get a place in Bergen any day I like.”

Then said Axel steadily enough:  “It’ll be some time before you can do that, anyway.  As long as you’re with child.”

“With child?  What are you talking about?”

Axel stared.  Was the girl mad?  True, he himself should have been more patient.  Now that he had the means of keeping her, he had grown too confident, and that was a mistake; there was no need to be sharp with her and make her wild; he need not have ordered her in so many words to help him with the potatoes that spring—­he might have planted them by himself.  There would be plenty of time for him to assert his authority after they were married; until then he ought to have had sense enough to give way.

But—­it was too bad, this business with Eleseus, this clerk, who came swaggering about with his walking-stick and all his fine talk.  For a girl to carry on like that when she was promised to another man—­and in her condition!  It was beyond understanding.  Up to then, Axel had had no rival to compete with—­now, it was different.

“Here’s a new paper for you,” he said.  “And here’s a bit of a thing I got you.  Don’t know if you’ll care about it.”

Barbro was cold.  They were sitting there together, drinking scalding hot coffee from the bowl, but for all that she answered icy cold: 

“I suppose that’s the gold ring you’ve been promising me this twelvemonth and more.”

This, however, was beyond the mark, for it was the ring after all.  But a gold ring it was not, and that he had never promised her—­’twas an invention of her own; silver it was, with gilt hands clasped, real silver, with the mark on and all.  But ah, that unlucky voyage of hers to Bergen!  Barbro had seen real engagement rings—­no use telling her!

“That ring!  Huh!  You can keep it yourself.”