Ex-Lensmand Geissler had always been a good friend to them both, and they had often wondered why; he got nothing out of it but their poor thanks—­it was more than they could understand.  Inger had spoken with him in Trondhjem, and could not make him out.  “He doesn’t seem to care a bit about any in the village but us,” she explained.

“Did he say so?”

“Yes.  He’s furious with the village here.  He’d show them, he said.”

“Ho!”

“And they’d find out one day, and be sorry they’d lost him, he said.”

They reached the fringe of the wood, and came in sight of their home. 
There were more buildings there than before, and all nicely painted. 
Inger hardly knew the place again, and stopped dead.

“You—­you don’t say that’s our place—­all that?” she exclaimed.

Little Leopoldine woke at last and sat up, thoroughly rested now; they lifted her out and let her walk.

“Are we there now?” she asked.

“Yes.  Isn’t it a pretty place?”

There were small figures moving, over by the house; it was Eleseus and Sivert, keeping watch.  Now they came running up.  Inger was seized with a sudden cold—­a dreadful cold in the head, with sniffing and coughing—­even her eyes were all red and watering too.  It always gives one a dreadful cold on board ship—­makes one’s eyes wet and all!

But when the boys came nearer they stopped running all of a sudden and stared.  They had forgotten what their mother looked like, and little sister they had never seen.  But father—­they didn’t know him at all till he came quite close.  He had cut off his heavy beard.

Chapter XII

All is well now.

Isak sows his oats, harrows, and rolls it in.  Little Leopoldine comes and wants to sit on the roller.  Sit on a roller?—­nay, she’s all too little and unknowing for that yet.  Her brothers know better.  There’s no seat on father’s roller.

But father thinks it fine and a pleasure to see little Leopoldine coming up so trustingly to him already; he talks to her, and shows her how to walk nicely over the fields, and not get her shoes full of earth.

“And what’s that—­why, if you haven’t a blue frock on today—­come, let me see; ay, ’tis blue, so it is.  And a belt round and all.  Remember when you came on the big ship?  And the engines—­did you see them?  That’s right—­and now run home to the boys again, they’ll find you something to play with.”

Oline is gone, and Inger has taken up her old work once more, in house and yard.  She overdoes it a little, maybe, in cleanliness and order, just by way of showing that she was going to have things differently now.  And indeed it was wonderful to see what a change was made; even the glass windows in the old turf hut were cleaned, and the boxes swept out.