“There will be plenty of time for that I don’t think we ought to stop here any longer.”

“No, this is no place to stop at,” she answered meekly.

“I have put up at Loevberg’s,” he said as they walked along the road.

“That’s where my trunk is.”

“I have seen it there,” said Ingmar.  “It’s too big for the back of the cart, so it will have to be left there till we can send for it.”

Brita stopped and looked up at him.  This was the first time he had intimated that he meant to take her home.

“I had a letter from father to-day.  He says that you also think that I ought to go to America.”

“I thought there was no harm in our having a second choice.  It wasn’t so certain that you would care to come back with me.”

She noticed that he said nothing about wanting her to come, but maybe it was because he did not wish to force himself upon her a second time.  She grew very reluctant.  It couldn’t be an enviable task to take one of her kind to the Ingmar Farm.  Then something seemed to say: 

“Tell him that you will go to America; it is the only service you can render him.  Tell him that, tell him that!” urged something within her.  And while this thought was still in her mind she heard some one say:  “I’m afraid that I am not strong enough to go to America.  They tell me that you have to work very hard over there.”  It was as if another had spoken, and not she herself.

“So they say,” Ingmar said indifferently.

She was ashamed of her weakness and thought of how only that morning she had told the prison chaplain that she was going out into the world a new and a better woman.  Thoroughly displeased with herself, she walked silently for some time, wondering how she should take back her words.  But as soon as she tried to speak, she was held back by the thought that if he still cared for her it would be the basest kind of ingratitude to repulse him again.  “If I could only read his thoughts!” she said herself.

Presently she stopped and leaned against a wall.  “All this noise and the sight of so many people makes my bead go round,” she said.  He put out his hand, which she took; then they went along, hand in hand.  Ingmar was thinking, “Now we look like sweethearts.”  All the same he wondered how it would be when he got home, how his mother and the rest of the folks would take it.

When they came to Loevberg’s place, Ingmar said that his horse was now thoroughly rested, and if she had no objection they might as well cover the first few stations that day.  Then she thought:  “Now is the time to tell him that you won’t go.  Thank him first, then tell him that you don’t want to go with him.”  She prayed God that she might be shown if he had come for her only out of pity.  In the meantime Ingmar had drawn the cart out of the shed.  The cart had been newly painted, the dasher shone, and the cushions had fresh covering.  To the buckboard was attached a little