Presently he said very gently: 

“There is something you want to tell me?”

“Yes.”

“And you are thinking about it all the time?”

“Day and night!”

“And it gets sort of mixed in with everything?”

“That’s true.”

“Now tell me about it, so there will be two instead of one to bear it.”

He sat looking into her eyes; they were like the eyes of a poor, hunted fawn.  But as she spoke they became calmer.

“Now you feel better,” he said when she had finished.

“I feel as if a great weight had been lifted from my heart.”

“That is because we are two to bear it.  Now, perhaps, you won’t want to go away.”

“Indeed I should love to stay!” she said.

“Then let us go home,” said Ingmar, rising.

“No, I’m afraid!”

“Mother is not so terrible,” lie laughed, “when she sees that one has a mind of one’s own.”

“No, Ingmar, I could never turn her out of her home.  I have no choice but to go to America.”

“I’m going to tell you something,” said Ingmar, with a mysterious smile.  “You needn’t be the least bit afraid, for there is some one who will help us.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s father.  He’ll see to it that everything comes out right.”

There was some one coming along the forest road.  It was Kaisa.  But as she was not bearing the familiar yoke, with the baskets, they hardly knew her at first.

“Good-day to you!” greeted Ingmar and Brita, and the old woman came up and shook hands with them.

“Well, I declare, here you sit, and all the folks from the farm out looking for you!  You were in such a hurry to get out of church,” the old woman went on, “that I never got to meet you at all.  So I went down to the farm to pay my respects to Brita.  When I got there who should I see but the Dean, and he was in the house calling Mother Martha at the top of his lungs before I even had a chance to say ‘how d’ye do.’  And before he had so much as shaken hands with her, he was crying out:  ’Now, Mother Martha, you can be proud of Ingmar!  It’s plain now that he belongs to the old stock; so we must begin to call him Big Ingmar.’

“Mother Martha, as you know, never says very much; she just stood there tying knots in her shawl.  ‘What’s this you’re telling me?’ she said finally.  ‘He has brought Brita home,’ the Dean explained, ’and, believe me, Mother Martha, he will be honoured and respected for it as long as he lives.’  ‘You don’t tell me,’ said the old lady.  ’I could hardly go on with the service when I saw them sitting in church; it was a better sermon than any I could ever preach.  Ingmar will be a credit to us all, as his father before him was.’  ‘The Dean brings us great news,’ said Mother Martha.  ’Isn’t he home yet?” asked the Dean.  ’No, he is not at home; but they may have stopped at Bergskog first.’”

“Did mother really say that?” cried Ingmar.