Then she draws aside the curtain and opens the window, and he sees her beautiful, kind face.
She is good, and she is wise. Her glances bring blessings like the sun’s on everything they meet. She directs and tends. Where she is, everything grows and flourishes. She bears happiness within her.
He swings himself up on to the window-sill to her, and is happy as a young lover.
Then he lifts her out into the garden and carries her down under the apple-trees. There he explains for her how beautiful everything is, and shows her the vegetable beds and the children’s garden and the funny little parsley leaves.
When the children awake, there is joy and rapture that father has come. They take possession of him. He must see all that is new and wonderful: the little nail-manufactory which pounds away in the brook, the bird’s-nest in the willow, and the little minnows in the pond, which swim in thousands near the surface of the water.
Then father, mother, and children take a long walk in the fields. He wants to see how close the rye stands, how the clover is growing, and how the potatoes are beginning to poke up their crumpled leaves.
He must see the cows when they come in from the pasture, visit the new-comers in the barn and sheep-house, look for eggs, and give all the horses sugar.
The children hang at his heels the whole day. No lessons, no work; only to wander about with their father!
In the evening he plays polkas for them, and all day he has been such a good comrade and playfellow that they fall asleep with a pious prayer that father may always stay with them.
He stays eight long days, and is joyous as a boy the whole time. He could stand it no longer, it was too much happiness for him. Ekeby was a thousand times worse, but Ekeby lay in the midst of the whirl of events. Oh, how much there was there to dream of and to play of! How could he live separated from the pensioners’ deeds, and from Löfven’s long lake, about which adventure’s wild chase rushed onward?
On his own estate everything went on in its calm, wonted way. Everything flourished and grew under the gentle mistress’s care. Every one was happy there. Everything which anywhere else could have caused discord and bitterness passed over there without complaints or pain. Everything was as it should be. If now the master of the house longed to live as pensioner at Ekeby, what then? Does it help to complain of heaven’s sun because it disappears every evening in the west, and leaves the earth in darkness?