“You can do as you please.”

“Ay, ’tis as I always said,” exclaims Oline.  “You’ve been out in the world and lived among great folks and fine folks, and learned all and everything.  ’Tis different with the likes of me.”

Ay, Oline stopped at nothing, she was intriguing all day long.  Sitting there telling Barbro how she herself was friends and on the best of terms with Barbro’s father, with Brede Olsen!  Ho, many a pleasant hour they’d had together, and a kindly man and rich and grand to boot was Brede, and never a hard word in his mouth.

But this could not go on for ever; neither Axel nor Barbro cared to have Oline there any longer, and Barbro had taken over all her work.  Oline made no complaint, but she flashed dangerous glances at her young mistress and changed her tone ever so little.

“Ay, great folk, ’tis true.  Axel, he was in town a while last harvest-time—­you didn’t meet him there, maybe?  Nay, that’s true, you were in Bergen that time.  But he went into town, he did; ’twas all to buy a mowing-machine and a harrow-machine.  And what’s folk at Sellanraa now beside you here?  Nothing to compare!”

She was beginning to shoot out little pinpricks, but even that did not help her now; neither of them feared her.  Axel told her straight out one day that she must go.

“Go?” says Oline.  “And how?  Crawling, belike?” No, she would not go, saying by way of excuse that she was poorly, and could not move her legs.  And to make things bad as could be, when once they had taken the work off her hands, and she had nothing to do at all, she collapsed, and was thoroughly ill.  She kept about for a week in spite of it, Axel looking furiously at her; but she stayed on from sheer malice, and at last she had to take to her bed.

And now she lay there, not in the least awaiting her blessed end, but counting the hours till she should be up and about again.  She asked for a doctor, a piece of extravagance unheard of in the wilds.

“Doctor?” said Axel.  “Are you out of your senses?”

“How d’you mean, then?” said Oline quite gently, as to something she could not understand.  Ay, so gentle and smooth-tongued was she, so glad to think she need not be a burden to others; she could pay for the doctor herself.

“Ho, can you?” said Axel.

“Why, and couldn’t I, then?” says Oline.  “And, anyway, you’d not have me lie here and die like a dumb beast in the face of the Lord?”

Here Barbro put in a word, and was unwise enough to say: 

“Well, what you’ve got to complain of, I’d like to know, when I bring you in your meals and all myself?  As for coffee, I’ve said you’re better without it, and meaning well.”

“Is that Barbro?” says Oline, turning just her eyes and no more to look for her; ay, she is poorly is Oline, and a pitiful sight with her eyes screwed round cornerways.  “Ay, maybe ’tis as you say, Barbro, if a tiny drop of coffee’d do me any harm, a spoonful and no more.”