A strange thing, Barbro seemed to have nothing really in her head but the thought of Bergen and town life.  Well and good.  But if so, why had she come back at all, confound her!  A telegram from her father would never have moved her a step in itself; she must have had some other reason.  And now here she was, eternally discontented from morning to night, year after year.  All these wooden buckets, instead of proper iron pails; cooking-pots instead of saucepans; the everlasting milking instead of a little walk round to the dairy; heavy boots, yellow soap, a pillow stuffed with hay; no military bands, no people.  Living like this....

They had many little bouts after the one big quarrel.  Ho, time and again they were at it!  “You say no more about it, if you’re wise,” said Barbro.  “And not to speak of what you’ve done about father and all.”

Said Axel:  “Well, what have I done?”

“Oh, you know well enough,” said she.  “But for all that you’ll not be Inspector, anyway.”

“Ho!”

“No, that you won’t.  I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Meaning I’m not good enough, perhaps?”

“Oh, good enough and good enough....  Anyway, you can’t read nor write, and never so much as take a newspaper to look at.”

“As to that,” said he, “I can read and write all I’ve any need for.  But as for you, with all your gabble and talk ...  I’m sick of it.”

“Well, then, here’s that to begin with,” said she, and threw down the silver ring on the table.

“Ho!” said he, after a while.  “And what about the other?”

“Oh, if you want your rings back that you gave me, you can have them,” said she, trying to pull off the gold one.

“You can be as nasty as you please,” said he.  “If you think I care....”  And he went out.

And naturally enough, soon after, Barbro was wearing both her rings again.

In time, too, she ceased to care at all for what he said about the death of the child.  She simply sniffed and tossed her head.  Not that she ever confessed anything, but only said:  “Well, and suppose I had drowned it?  You live here in the wilds and what do you know of things elsewhere?” Once when they were talking of this, she seemed to be trying to get him to see he was taking it all too seriously; she herself thought no more of getting rid of a child than the matter was worth.  She knew two girls in Bergen who had done it; but one of them had got two months’ imprisonment because she had been a fool and hadn’t killed it, but only left it out to freeze to death; and the other had been acquitted.  “No,” said Barbro, “the law’s not so cruel hard now as it used to be.  And besides, it’s not always it gets found out.”  There was a girl in Bergen at the hotel who had killed two children; she was from Christiania, and wore a hat—­a hat with feathers in.  They had given her three months for the second one, but the first was never discovered, said Barbro.